On the moon

Isro's success will bring long-term gains

The soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 mission’s Vikram lander is an impressive demonstration of the technical prowess of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), making India only the fourth country to achieve a successful controlled moon landing. This achievement is especially exciting, given the crash landing that led to Chandrayaan-2’s partial failure and the very recent setback of a Russian lunar mission. The next stage in the Chandrayaan-3 mission would be the rollout of the Pragyan Rover, after four or five hours of Vikram studying local conditions and checking its systems. Pragyan is scheduled to come down a ramp and then