Chandrayan-3 success: Top US leaders celebrate India’s lunar success

From Vice President Kamala Harris to Ambassador Eric Garcetti, top American leaders congratulated India for the historic touchdown of Chandrayaan-3 on the southern polar region of the moon, calling it an ‘incredible feat’.

Congratulations to India for the historic landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the southern polar region of the moon,” Indian-American Kamala Harris wrote on X on Thursday as India became the fourth country to achieve the feat after the US, China, and the erstwhile Soviet Union.

“It’s an incredible feat for all the scientists and engineers involved. We are proud to partner with you on this mission and space exploration more broadly,” Harris said.

Last month, India signed the three-year-old Artemis Accords, a US-led international partnership on planetary exploration and research.

The Artemis Accords is closely linked to NASA’s Artemis Program, which aims to return astronauts to the moon’s surface, build a space camp there, and carry out in depth space exploration.

Congratulating the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which is Artemis Accords partner, NASA administrator Bill Nelson wrote on X: “Congratulations @isro on your successful Chandrayaan-3 lunar South Pole landing! And congratulations to #India on being the 4th country to successfully soft-land a spacecraft on the Moon. We’re glad to be your partner on this mission!”

Encouraged by the success of its moon mission, ISRO Chairman S. Somanath said the Aditya-L1 satellite for the Sun mission will be launched during the first week of September.

According to him, the coronagraphy satellite will take about 120 days to travel about 15 lakh km to reach its destination to study the solar atmosphere.