India became the first country to land a spacecraft near the south pole of the Moon in a historic moment, drawing cheers from crowds across the country.
Chandrayaan-3, which means "moon ship" in Sanskrit, landed its Vikram lander shortly after 18:00. (12:30 GMT) near the South Pole of the Moon, a world first for a space program.
"India is on the Moon," Sreedhara said Panicker Somanath, President of the Space Research Organization of India (ISRO) at the time of Vikram's landing.
For India, successful landing marks its rise as a space power as it says the government seeks to encourage private investment in space launches and associated satellite projects.
People all over across the country sat in front of television screens and prayed as the spacecraft descended as it approached the surface.
"This is the victory cry of a new India," said the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, waving the Indian flag as he witnessed the landing in South Africa, where he attended the BRICS summit.
India not only went down in history as the first country to land near the South Pole region, but also joined the United States and the former Soviet Union. and China during a moon landing.
The mission launched nearly six weeks ago in front of thousands of enthusiastic spectators and took significantly longer to reach the Moon than the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 70s, which arrived within days .
At the time, India used much weaker missiles than those of the United States. Instead, the spacecraft circled the Earth several times to gain speed before embarking on its month-long lunar journey.
Rough terrain makes it easier to landed at the South Pole. Ice and water in the area could provide fuel, oxygen and fresh water for future missions.
It was India's second attempt to land on the moon. In 2019, the Chandrayaan-2 successfully deployed an orbiter, but its lander crashed.
Russia announced on Monday at 47:00 its first lunar mission, also aimed at the South Pole - failed after its Luna-25 spacecraft went out of control and crashed on the moon. The head of Russia's national space company Roscosmos attributed the failure to lack of experience due to the long interruption of lunar research that followed the last Soviet mission to the moon in 1976.
A six-wheeled rover to cross the lunar surface and collect images and data. The rover is expected to continue operating for two weeks, conducting a variety of experiments, including spectrometric analyzes of the mineral composition of the lunar surface.