why is it so impressive that India landed on the South side of the Moon?
In: 7033
The south side is in ~~permanent~~ darkness a lot of the time, so very cold.
This means that deep craters are in permanent shadow and contain frozen water.
If further space exploration takes place, the ice could be a very important resource, as a way to make hydrogen for space exploration launched from the lower gravity of the moon.
Also, it shows India as a nation capable of such a feat, with all the associated money, resources, skills, knowledge and technology. Not many countries have landed on the moon before, only ~~Russia~~ the USSR, the United States Of America and China.
The lunar South Pole contains water ice, which will be crucial to colonization missions and establishing a base. Sending water to Lunar residents (Lunians? Lunars? Lunatics?) would be extremely expensive. It’s much easier if they can just mine up some ice, thaw it out and drink it. Also, water contains hydrogen and oxygen. Guess what rocket fuel is made of. Liquid hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen in the water could also be used for air to breathe, but we would still need to import some nitrogen to make the air similar to Earth’s.
It’s also a major achievement because the South Pole is dark and covered in deep craters, making landing difficult. Russia crashed on the lunar South Pole just two days ago!
Because it’s really difficult, and both a test and a show of the capabilities of the people working at the organisation that does this.
It’s like being the fourth person to break an old world record in a sport. Sure, three people HAVE done it before you, but many more tired and didn’t. It’s still a massive achievement that other’s can’t reproduce.
See Russia’s recent fumble. Even nations that have the historical capability can’t do it if they let their space sector decline. It sets a bar.
Also, I’m not being fair to the Indians here. They are the first to land on the moon’s poles. I don’t know how much more difficult it was in practice than other landings, but no one else did it regardless.
It’s impressive for a bunch of reasons:
It’s literally rocket science
It takes years of trial and error and a LOT of resources to get to this scientific [and spacecraft production] goal
ISRO Chairman S Somanath says almost 1,000 engineers and scientists worked on the mission
India has demonstrated it’s technical ability to the world
Some “other guys” plugged their lander a few days ago, btw
1. Indian missions are cheap. A typical Indian mission costs less than making Hollywood movie.
2. South side of the moon is hard to land on. India is first to land there. Lots to explore there.
3. Always good to have more countries invent technology. More technologies make humanity more robust.
Most Moon and interplanetary missions land on equatorial orbit (including the Chinese one which landed on far side of the moon). This is the first landing near the poles. Since water was detected on the Moon there’s been a renewed interest in landing on the Moon. Russia tried & failed a few days ago. Japanese launch was set back by issues with the lander. American and Chinese launches are planned in the future not in 2023. So India managed to land first.
https://www.reuters.com/science/why-are-space-agencies-racing-moons-south-pole-2023-08-22/
You can see the image in this article of landing sites and see how far South the Indian landing was compared to US, Russia and China.
Prior to this only 3 countries had successfully landed on the moon at all, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. Russia recently tried but there was some kind of problem and their unmanned vehicle crashed into the moon. The US is stilled the only country to successfully land any crewed lunar missions, but those were all the way back in 70s with the Apollo program. In total 12 humans have walked on the moon across 6 successful landings as part of the Apollo program.
It’s like a really bad neighborhood in a violent city. So just landing there and getting back alive is considered impressive.
Hey, it’s supposed to be ELI5! 😀
It is impressive that they landed on the moon, period. Only 3 countries have done it before (USA, USSR and China). Plenty have tried and failed, including India itself in an earlier attempt. This successful mission puts them in a very elite space club.
Landing on the south pole is doubly impressive because the area is very hazardous and no one has been able to pull off a landing over there before this.
From a scientific standpoint the south pole of the moon is important because it is largely unexplored and scientists have theorized that craters over there hold large quantities of ice. This mission will undoubtedly increase our understanding of the moon, especially related to the goal of establishing a base there.
**Logistics**: It’s much easier and safer to land near the moon’s equator, as the earth and moon are somewhat aligned along each other’s equators. An equatorial lunar landing doesn’t require many mid-course corrections. This is why most of the NASA Apollo and Surveyor landings were near the moon’s equator – it’s safer and more efficient to do that. Getting a lander to touch down at one of the poles requires a lot of change in the lander’s trajectory along the way, which requires more fuel, tighter telemetry, and the risk of loss is greater. So that’s the logistical challenge.
**Science**: There’s an exploratory interest in the south pole because it has tall craters that shield most of the bottom of those craters from sunlight (the lunar north pole doesn’t have this type of geology). In some cases, there are craters at the south pole that have bottoms that *never* see sunlight. It’s theorized that water ice (or measurable traces of water ice) could still be at the bottom of those south polar craters, as they don’t get much sunlight. Understanding the origin of the earth-moon system’s water ice would be an important discovery for understanding the origins of life.
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