Chandrayaan-3: According to ISRO Director S. Somnath, the choice of the lunar south pole has enormous scientific implications

As India continues to bask in the glory of Chandrayaan-3, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) made history last night by becoming the first space agency to successfully land a spacecraft on the south pole of another planet.

The abundance of craters and deep pits with widely varied depths and radii made it difficult to gently land at the lunar south pole.

The hundreds of ISRO scientists had a difficult time since it took three tries before a spacecraft could successfully land on the moon’s surface. The most recent, Chandrayaan-2, was classified as a partial failure in September 2019 when its lander lost contact and crashed on the lunar surface after a rough landing.

The scientists made every effort to achieve the gentle landing this time around, learning from the mistakes of the last attempt that brought India so near to success in 2019.

What was said by the ISRO Chief?
When asked why the dangerous south pole was chosen as the landing site for the lander Vikram, ISRO Chief S. Somnath said to NDTV, “The whole Chandrayaan-3 instrumentation is for landing on the south pole or near the south pole. However, there are a ton of scientific opportunities in the South Pole. They are associated with the minerals and water that the moon contains.

There are a lot of additional physical processes that researchers would want to look into. Five of our tools are intended to investigate these regions, he said.

The ISRO Chief said that this time, the scientists had to start from zero since no data could be recovered from the Chandrayaan-2 lander due to its rough landing and subsequent destruction.

He continued by saying that the first year was devoted identifying the errors that resulted in Chandrayaan-2’s failure.