India has done it.
It has become now the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the moon after the US and China and the former Soviet Union just moments ago, we're talking just a couple of minutes.
The Sandra on three spacecraft landed on the lunar South Pole.
Look at the celebration here.
India's Space Research organization is already sharing stunning photos from the mission and look at these pictures of the approach.
It's a rare close up of the moon's kind of dusty gray terrain.
This mission comes as space programs around the world are racing to get to the moon this weekend.
You'll remember Russia failed to land a spacecraft on the moon.
NASA has announced multiple crude lunar missions including plans to have the first woman and person of color on the moon's surface, but India landed on the south pole of the moon and experts believe there could be ice mineral deposits, valuable elements there.
Atika Soo joins us, live in New Delhi with more.
I can only imagine how excited people are.
Absolutely the moment that soft landing happened.
Poppy, you should have seen these people behind me.
Now they are leaving this temporary pavilion that was set up, but they were clapping, they were cheering, there were chants, they were cheering the Prime Minister on after that while he was addressing the nation.
The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is at the BRICS summit in South Africa currently, but he tuned in virtually to watch that moment.
And what a moment it was, you could see the emotional scenes inside the mission control center.
And if you just go four years back, approximately those very hearts were broken, not only inside the mission control room, but across India, millions of hearts broke when the Chandra two failed to make the landing on the moon.
But well, that's the past.
Now.
Look at what happened today.
India is not only like you pointed out Victor the fourth country in the world to make the soft landing on the moon, it's also the first country in the world to make the soft landing in the South Pole region.
A big accomplishment for India.
Just the first in many, in terms of its space ambitions.
It wants to send a mission to space very soon, a manned mission.
It also wants a place in the International Space Center there.
So a lot happening at the International Space Station right now.
We still have the Indian Prime Minister speaking live.
This is like people have told us and scientists have said a moment of intense national pride to exciting moment.
They're joining a very small fraternity.
So with the report there.
Thank you so much.
Let's bring in now Mike Massimino, he's a former NASA astronaut and professor of mechanical Engineering at Columbia University.
Also has a new book coming out in December called Moonshot, a NASA astronaut's guide to achieving the impossible.
Mike.
Good to have you.
Let's start here with the positioning, how important it is for India, not just to join this fraternity but to go now to the South Pole.
Yeah.
So the South Pole is Big Victor.
Um because of ice, there's uh there's ice there.
Uh So the interest with ice is that it can be possibly made into drinking water to support crews that would go there, astronauts that would go there and also could be turned into rocket fuel to use the moon as a place to launch to further locations out in the cosmos.
So that is the great interest with the South Pole and no one's been able to land there yet.
This is the first time a country has pulled that one off.
So this is big news and looking forward to what they'll find out there.
And what are they trying to find out there?
Well, if they can, if they can find that ice and see and learn more about it, how it's composed of what, what form it's in where it is.
Exactly.
And maybe how they can process it into drinking water and how they can maybe process it into fuel.
Uh also just the, the orbital mechanics, the physics of getting to the, the reason it's so difficult is because if it's, it's a difficult place to get to, based on the math of physics, the orbital mechanics, it's harder to get there than it is in the toward the center of the moon where we've landed previously.
So sharing, hopefully they'll share all that information I would expect they would, what the terrain is like if there's any atmosphere there, at all, any traces of any elements there.
So all of these things will help us understand the South Pole, which is of great interest as a possible landing location, not only for more spacecraft like this, but also for people in the future.
It's just been a few days since the Russians, their unmanned mission to the moon ended in failure, it crashed into the surface of the moon.
Um And now that India has, has landed this, are we in another moon race?
I mean, what do you see with, with this?
I guess, rush back.
Yeah, I hope it's not a, I hope it's not a race.
I think it's good to have a little competition maybe, but I hopefully we're gonna be sharing information together.
I think what we're seeing here is that it's possible now to get back to the moon not just 50 years ago, like the United States did an incredible accomplishment.
It was just a visit.
Now we're looking to go back and settle there and explore there and go there for science and for prestige for national prestige.
India is gonna, you know, this is a great accomplishment for them and also strategically, economically to see what resources there.
And can we use it as a place to move to other places in the, in the cosmos to, to launch from there?
So I, I think, I think what we're seeing is that it's possible, you know, when things are in, we can't get there for the last 50 years.
It's been, uh, you know, it's tough to get there and so on.
But now that we see it's possible more people think about what they can do there.
And so that's why I think we're seeing this, this heightened interest, particularly in that location on the moon.
But I hope it's not really a race.
I hope it's cooperation is not an easy thing to do.
This is the first time a country has been able to pull it off.
Hopefully they'll share that information and hopefully we can go together.
Uh It's, it's a, it's a huge undertaking and I hope it's done as a, as a team between different countries around the world.
Yeah.
Good for India.
India.
India, Mike.
See what happens too.
We'll see what we will be watching him.
I hope everything keeps working and they got a roll.
Mike Vaino.
Thanks so much.
Look forward to the book.
Oh, thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you for plugging in.