back to the moon

Four years after India’s Chandrayaan-2 failed to make a soft landing near the Moon’s south pole, the countdown has begun for a fresh attempt by Chandrayaan-3. The launch is scheduled for Friday, and is expected to land on the Moon on August 23 or 24, when a lander will land, a rover will land, and get busy taking readings and conducting experiments, some of the darkest and coldest patches that hold Many secrets can come. If successful, India will be the fourth country to reach the Moon and the first to physically probe its far side. There have been several improvements reportedly made by our space agency to rectify what went wrong last time. Many efforts have been made to reduce the risk. Among other things, a wider space is being targeted to make the landing more gentle, with visual data from previous missions pre-fed for better accuracy of approach by a robust craft. Still, there may always be unknown unknowns. What is important is the display of pioneering spirit. If all goes according to plan, we may have expanded the boundaries of what mankind knows about this mysterious object in the sky that has fascinated us for centuries.