Two visitors from India — a lander named Vikram and a rover named Pragyan — landed in the southern polar region of the moon on Wednesday. The two robots, from a mission named Chandrayaan-3, make India the first country to ever reach this part of the lunar surface in one piece — and only the fourth country ever to land on the moon.
"We have achieved soft landing on the moon,” S. Somanath, the chair of the Indian Space Research Organization, said after a roar ripped through the ISRO compound just past 6 p.m. local time. "India is on the moon.”
The Indian public already takes great pride in the accomplishments of the nation’s space program, which has orbited the moon and Mars and routinely launches satellites above the Earth with far fewer financial resources than other space-faring nations.