New Delhi:

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that the perception of people living abroad had changed after seeing how India handled the COVID-19 pandemic and that the country’s lunar mission ‘Chandrayaan-3’ had a huge impact on Indians living abroad.

Addressing an event at Kirori Mal College today in Delhi, Mr Jaishankar noted that decisions made at home are keenly followed by the world.

“We are the largest country in the world. We are the fifth largest economy, soon we’ll be the third. How we do at home is watched by everybody abroad. What decisions we make at home, is also very keenly followed by the world. So, if we are now in the coming weeks going to decide our future in whatever way we wish, it’s not just a conversation amongst ourselves. It’s a conversation or a discussion in which the other six billion people are also tuned in. These are all aspects of why Bharat matters,” he said.

The External Affairs Minister said that people around the world are fascinated by India’s technological feats. He called the Chandrayaan-3 mission and COVID management among the most impactful things done by India in the past 10 years.

He said, “Probably much more fascinating to the world are those technological feats that we do. I would say in the last 10 years, probably the most impactful thing we have done, other than COVID management, was going to the moon. The Chandrayaan-3 mission has had a huge impact on the perception of Indians abroad. And finally, as I said, a lot of it is about actually a country which can stand up for itself, for its interests, for its citizens, stand up to pressure, and in a sense, you know, radiate its persona and its culture.”

Speaking about India’s global image at present, Mr Jaishankar said that the perception of India changed after how India handled the COVID challenge. He noted that India started as a country of “great concern” and ended up as the “source of the greatest support.”

He said, “I do want to share with you as someone who travels a fair amount, what is our global image today. When we say why Bharat matters, at the end of the day, countries matter because there is a perception, there is a branding which has been created. I, from my own travel experiences, thought of six or seven key points today. When any of you go abroad or you meet someone from abroad, these are their perceptions of India.”

“One, I would say the dominant one is that this was a country which handled the COVID challenge exceptionally well. It started as the country of the greatest concern. It ended up as the source of the greatest support. And not only handled COVID, but they made the right decisions which enabled us today to become the fastest-growing economy, the largest economy in the world. Because do remember, a lot of countries today have still not recovered from the COVID. That their economic performance even today is still shaped very much by the shock and damage that they suffered during COVID,” Jaishankar said.

He also spoke about how India has been bringing its people back home when there is a war or any other emergency in another country. He talked about how Indian students were brought back to India under Operation Ganga. Jaishankar noted that many nations asked their citizens if they had to return to their country on their own.

Jaishankar said, “The second is how we secure our citizens of India. Believe me, that has got everybody’s attention in the world. You know, a lot of us rightly are very proud of how – I’ll give you an example of how we got our students out of Ukraine in Operation Ganga. As I said, rightly so. But I also want you to know that many countries told their students and their citizens, saying, sorry guys, there’s nothing I can do. You now have to figure out your way out.”

“And these were not developing countries. They were even developed countries, who told their people, you are on your own. So, this change which has come about, that any Indian travelling anywhere has that sense, that look, you know, sometimes people talk about, you know, there’s something called a passport index. And the passport index is based on how many places you don’t need a visa for,” he added.

Jaishankar emphasised that the Indian passport is looked at with greater respect and it shows that the government stands with the person carrying that passport. He said that the passport index should include who will come for a person when he or she is in trouble and the system which is willing to back you up when you go out and termed it the “real value of the passport.”

He noted, “To me, something is missing in that index. I would have put which passport are you carrying and who will come for you when you are in trouble. And believe me, if you put that factor in, you will get a very different passport index out there. Not getting a visa and having the ability to travel easily is just one part of it.”

“What happens when something goes wrong? Who will look after you? Who has a system which is ready to back you up when you go out? To me, that’s the real value of the passport. And if the Indian passport today is looked at with greater respect, as I said, one part of it is what you do at home. But the other is also that people know that this passport means that their government stands behind the person who’s carrying the passport,” he added.

Stressing that people abroad are fascinated by how things like the ration card system and election system work in India, Mr Jaishankar said, “The third is our performance at home. And I often share with my colleagues in the cabinet and the parliament that they think that when the foreign minister goes out of India, all the time we discuss foreign policy makes sense.”

“But in reality, actually people abroad are enormously fascinated by what we are doing at home for the rest of our lives. They want to know how your ration system works. How does your election system work? You know, how are you getting your gas cylinder? How are you getting your electricity connection? Why is it that it has changed because they have read all these stories,” he added.

Highlighting the infrastructure progress in India, he said that the Indian government has built 40 million houses and given them to people who have low incomes.

“We are speaking about Japan. Let me give you a number related to Japan. In the last 10 years, We have built 40 million houses and given them to people who are eligible given their low income. At 4.8 families, which is the average number in India, that means about 190 million people have got houses in the last 10 years. That’s one and a half times the population of Japan. Now when you tell somebody in Japan, you know, guess what, I’ve been housing one and a half times your size in the last ten years. They then actually get the scale of what is happening in this country. Then there is of course the infrastructure progress. I think we all live in this country, we can see it every day in different ways,” Mr Jaishankar said.

He stated that there is enormous interest in the world in investing in India, knowing in India and travelling in India and stressed that there are a lot of possibilities in India as the nation is globalising and creating a pathway by its talent and skill at home has access to a global workplace.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A file photo of Chandrayaan-3 Project Director P. Veeramuthuvel.
| Photo Credit: Moorthy. G

India’s ambitious plans to have its own space station by 2035 and have an Indian astronaut on the moon by 2040 are progressing on track, P Veeramuthuvel, Project Director of ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 mission, said on February 10.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi and ISRO Chairman have already said that by 2040 we should have an Indian astronaut on the moon and also to have our space station by 2035. These are very ambitious plans that ISRO has taken up and we are working towards that,” he told PTI in Udhagamandalam .

On ISRO’s success in bringing back the Propulsion Module (PM) of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft to Earth’s orbit, Mr. Veeramuthuvel said, “as far as Chandrayaan-3 is concerned, the lander and rover mission successfully completed one lunar day.”

“We successfully completed the hop on experiment wherein we used the same engine where we landed and again we operated the payload for one earth day,” he added.

The propulsion module which was supposed to orbit around the moon met all the mission objectives successfully. “We brought the propulsion module back to earth’s orbit because we got some propellent available in the propulsion module and demonstrated (our capability) by successfully bringing it from moon’s orbit to earth’s orbit,” he said.

Anil Bharadwaj, director, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad during at public talk on moon explorations at Jawaharalal Nehru planetarium in Bengaluru on Wednesday.
| Photo Credit: BHAGYA PRAKASH K.

India’s next lunar mission LUPEX which will be launched in the next few years in collaboration with Japan will be a precursor to the country’s ambitious lunar sample return mission, said a top space scientist.

Anil Bharadwaj, director, Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), who delivered a public lecture on the Lunar Exploration Program of India on Wednesday said that LUPEX will be a precursor to ISRO’s lunar sample return mission and for sending the first Indian to the moon by 2040.

“In our previous lunar missions, we have already successfully demonstrated orbiting, landing and rovering. The next step is that we should bring something back from the moon. That is why we are participating in the LUPEX mission which is going to be very useful for future sampling missions and landing of humans on the surface of the moon by 2040,” Dr Bharadwaj said.

The Indo-Japanese LUPEX mission is envisaged to explore the permanently shadowed regions or the dark side of the moon.

The launch vehicle for the mission will be a Japanese rocket, the lander system will be developed by ISRO while the rover by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and its landing point will be the south pole of the moon.

“The plan is to land very close to the polar regions and go into deep shadowed regions which are called permanently shadowed regions where sunlight never reaches. We want to see what is there in these permanently shadowed regions. This will be a three to six months mission,” Dr. Bharadwaj said.

Dr. Bharadwaj added that all the scientific payloads onboard the Chandrayaan-3 mission have worked very well and have brought very good science data.

• Anil Bharadwaj said that LUPEX will be a precursor to ISRO’s lunar sample return mission and for sending the first Indian to the moon by 2040.
• The Indo-Japanese LUPEX mission is envisaged to explore the permanently shadowed regions or the dark side of the moon.
• Dr. Bharadwaj added that all the scientific payloads onboard the Chandrayaan-3 mission have worked very well and have brought very good science data.

Pithoragarh:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said India’s voice is getting stronger in a world surrounded by challenges and asserted that the country’s power was acknowledged internationally during the G20 Summit. Addressing a public rally here, the prime minister said his government has taken decisions on issues pending for 30 to 40 years, like the women’s reservation bill.

He referred to India’s successful Chandrayaan-3 mission, saying it reached that part of the moon where no other country could. The strength of India is being acknowledged globally and it was evident during the G20 summit held in Delhi, PM Modi said.

“There was a time when a mood of despair gripped the nation. Everyone prayed and wondered when the country would be pulled out of the dark shadows of scams of thousands of crores of rupees.

“But now, when the world is surrounded by challenges India’s voice is getting stronger. Don’t you feel good when India shows the world the way?” the prime minister said.

He said the change has not been brought about by Modi but by the people of India who gave him a chance for a second time to serve them. “The entire credit for it goes to the 140 crore people of the country,” PM Modi said.

The prime minister said that when he shakes hands with dignitaries from around the world he also looks into their eyes. “When they look at me they do not see me but the 140 crore people of the country in me,” he said.

The prime minister said that 13.50 crore people have risen above the poverty line in the last five years alone. It shows that India can overcome poverty, he said.

Addressing the people of Uttarakhand as “dear family members”, PM Modi said he has a personal bond and memory attached to every inch of the land and expressed his gratitude to the people for giving him such a warm welcome.

“The people of Uttarakhand take me as a family member. They share their joys with me like the birth of a child or a daughter doing well in her studies through letters. I am really blessed to enjoy such an intimacy with them,” PM Modi said.

Describing Uttarakhand as the land of spirituality and valour, the prime minister posed faith in the unique ability of its people and said the decade belongs to them. “I had said it first from the land of Baba Kedar (Kedarnath). Today I am returning from the feet of Adi Kailash and I reiterate my faith in the unique ability of its people,” he said.

Accusing the previous governments of ignoring the development of border areas, the prime minister said, “Development of border villages, which we consider as our first villages, is our priority.” Lack of development had led to migration from Uttarakhand’s villages with many of them completely deserted. With the change in circumstances, people are gradually returning to their homes, PM Modi said.

Earlier in the day, the prime minister inaugurated and laid the foundation of multiple development projects in Uttarakhand worth nearly Rs 4,200 crore. He said the projects will steer the Kumaon region on the path of development.

Uttarakhand is going to benefit immensely from the paradigm shift in the attitude towards the development of border areas.

The number of pilgrims arriving for Char Dham yatra this year is nearing 50 lakh, breaking all records, PM Modi said.

“Major reconstruction projects have been undertaken in Badrinath and Kedarnath. The ropeway link between Kedarnath and Hemkund Sahib is going to benefit the physically challenged people. I want Manaskhand also to prosper and grow like Kedarkhand.” He asked people to prepare themselves to receive many pilgrims and tourists in the near future. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Group Director of ISRO at Satish Dhawan Space Centre G. Appanna and Raghu Group of Educational Institution chairman K. Raghu releasing a poster for World Space Week programme, in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday.
| Photo Credit: K.R. DEEPAK

With the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, the scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) are geared up for its next programmes such as Gaganyaan and Shukrayaan, said Group Director of ISRO at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, G. Appanna.

Addressing the media, along with Raghu Group of Institutions chairman K. Raghu, here on October 4 (Wednesday), he announced the launch of the four-day World Space Week at Raghu Engineering College, Dakamarri. The four-day celebration will begin on October 5 (Thursday) and end on October 8 (Sunday).

The celebration coincides with the launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957, and the signing of the treaty on October 10, 1967, between nations to use outer space for peaceful exploration, he said.

IT Minister Gudivada Amarnath will inaugurate the programme while Y. Sreenivasa Rao, Director General, Naval System and Materials, DRDO, will deliver the valedictory address.

Around 20 scientists from ISRO will take part in the celebrations. They will deliver lectures, conduct symposiums and organise paintings, poster making and quiz competitions for school and college students.

“About 3,000 students are expected to visit the REC campus daily. We are setting up a huge exhibition corner, showcasing rocket and satellite prototypes, right from the first one to the latest,” said Mr. Appanna.

Such shows are being conducted in four centres in Andhra Pradesh, apart from Visakhapatnam. Such programmes are being held in various colleges in Kurnool, Rajamahendravaram and Sriharikota.

Mr. Raghu said that food would be provided to all students visiting the college on all the four days.

Speaking about the success of Chandrayaan-3, Mr. Appana said that the mission was highly critical and every step had to be monitored. “The mission has been accomplished. We conducted a hopping test and this has given us the idea that we have to manufacture a module that can land and lift off, once the mission is accomplished. The spectrometer has found many minerals on the surface of the moon. Primarily, there is abundant sulphur, which can be used as refuelling material for the modules that land on the moon,” Mr. Appanna said.

He said that the Gaganyaan mission is progressing well and India will soon have a flight to carry astronauts. “We will be testing the recovery vehicle shortly,” he said.

He also said that the World Space Week programme is being organised to encourage young minds to undertake space study and become entrepreneurs in this field. Startups are welcome to chip in with their ideas and products, said Mr. Appanna.

In an exciting milestone for lunar scientists around the globe, India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander touched down 600 km from the south pole of the moon on August 23, 2023.

In just under 14 Earth days, Chandrayaan-3 provided scientists with valuable new data and further inspiration to explore the moon. And the Indian Space Research Organisation has shared these initial results with the world.

While the data from Chandrayaan-3’s rover, named Pragyan, or “wisdom” in Sanskrit, showed the lunar soil contains expected elements such as iron, titanium, aluminum and calcium, it also showed an unexpected surprise – sulphur.

Planetary scientists like me have known that sulphur exists in lunar rocks and soils, but only at a very low concentration. These new measurements imply there may be a higher sulphur concentration than anticipated.

Pragyan has two instruments that analyse the elemental composition of the soil – an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer and a laser-induced breakdown spectrometer, or LIBS for short. Both of these instruments measured sulphur in the soil near the landing site.

Sulphur in soils near the moon’s poles might help astronauts live off the land one day, making these measurements an example of science that enables exploration.

Geology of the moon

There are two main rock types on the moon’s surface – dark volcanic rock and the brighter highland rock. The brightness difference between these two materials forms the familiar “man in the moon” face or “rabbit picking rice” image to the naked eye.

Scientists measuring lunar rock and soil compositions in labs on Earth have found that materials from the dark volcanic plains tend to have more sulphur than the brighter highlands material.

Sulphur mainly comes from volcanic activity. Rocks deep in the moon contain sulphur, and when these rocks melt, the sulfphur becomes part of the magma. When the melted rock nears the surface, most of the sulphur in the magma becomes a gas that is released along with water vapor and carbon dioxide.

Some of the sulphur does stay in the magma and is retained within the rock after it cools. This process explains why sulphur is primarily associated with the moon’s dark volcanic rocks.

Chandrayaan-3’s measurements of sulphur in soils are the first to occur on the moon. The exact amount of sulphur cannot be determined until the data calibration is completed.

The uncalibrated data collected by the LIBS instrument on Pragyan suggests that the moon’s highland soils near the poles might have a higher sulphur concentration than highland soils from the equator and possibly even higher than the dark volcanic soils.

These initial results give planetary scientists like me who study the moon new insights into how it works as a geologic system. But we’ll still have to wait and see if the fully calibrated data from the Chandrayaan-3 team confirms an elevated sulphur concentration.

Atmospheric sulphur formation

The measurement of sulphur is interesting to scientists for at least two reasons. First, these findings indicate that the highland soils at the lunar poles could have fundamentally different compositions, compared with highland soils at the lunar equatorial regions. This compositional difference likely comes from the different environmental conditions between the two regions – the poles get less direct sunlight.

Second, these results suggest that there’s somehow more sulphur in the polar regions. Sulphur concentrated here could have formed from the exceedingly thin lunar atmosphere.

The polar regions of the moon receive less direct sunlight and, as a result, experience extremely low temperatures compared with the rest of the moon. If the surface temperature falls, below -73 degrees C, then sulphur from the lunar atmosphere could collect on the surface in solid form – like frost on a window.

Sulphur at the poles could also have originated from ancient volcanic eruptions occurring on the lunar surface, or from meteorites containing sulphur that struck the surface and vaporised on impact.

Lunar sulphur as a resource

For long-lasting space missions, many agencies have thought about building some sort of base on the moon. Astronauts and robots could travel from the south pole base to collect, process, store and use naturally occurring materials like sulphur on the moon – a concept called in-situ resource utilisation.

In-situ resource utilisation means fewer trips back to Earth to get supplies and more time and energy spent exploring. Using sulphur as a resource, astronauts could build solar cells and batteries that use sulphur, mix up sulphur-based fertiliser and make sulphur-based concrete for construction.

Sulphur-based concrete actually has several benefits compared with the concrete normally used in building projects on Earth.

For one, sulphur-based concrete hardens and becomes strong within hours rather than weeks, and it’s more resistant to wear. It also doesn’t require water in the mixture, so astronauts could save their valuable water for drinking, crafting breathable oxygen and making rocket fuel.

While seven missions are currently operating on or around the moon, the lunar south pole region hasn’t been studied from the surface before, so Pragyan’s new measurements will help planetary scientists understand the geologic history of the moon. It’ll also allow lunar scientists like me to ask new questions about how the moon formed and evolved.

For now, the scientists at Indian Space Research Organisation are busy processing and calibrating the data. On the lunar surface, Chandrayaan-3 is hibernating through the two-week-long lunar night, where temperatures will drop to -120 degrees C. The night will last until September 22.

There’s no guarantee that the lander component of Chandrayaan-3, called Vikram, or Pragyan will survive the extremely low temperatures, but should Pragyan awaken, scientists can expect more valuable measurements.

Jeffrey Gillis-Davis is research professor of physics, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. This article is republished from The Conversation.

Aditya L1 onboard the PSLV-C57 the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on September 1, 2023 on the eve of its launch. Photo: X/@ISRO via PTI

The European Space Agency (ESA) which had provided crucial support to ISRO to monitor the Chandrayaan-3’s health, will also be supporting Aditya-L1, providing deep space communication services to the mission.

“ESA’s global network of deep space tracking stations and use of internationally recognised technical standards allows us to help our partners track, command and receive data from their spacecraft almost anywhere in the solar system,” said Ramesh Chellathurai, ESA service manager, and an ESA cross-support liaison officer for ISRO.

Mr. Chellathurai added that for the Aditya-L1 mission, ESA is providing support from all three of its 35-metre deep space antennas over Australia, Spain and Argentina, as well as support from the Kourou station in French Guiana and coordinated support from the Goonhilly Earth Station in the UK.

Ground services

ESA said that it was the main provider of ground station services for Aditya-L1. ESA stations will support the mission from beginning to end: from the critical ‘Launch and Early Orbit Phase’, throughout the journey to L1, and then to send commands to and receive science data from Aditya-L1 for multiple hours per day over the next two years of routine operations.

The space agency added that from April to December 2022, ESA and ISRO teams had worked together intensively to evaluate ISRO’s strategy for operating the Aditya-L1 and challenge their new orbit determination software.

“With its experience flying and even rescuing missions at the Lagrange points, ESA was in the perfect position to help ISRO improve their new orbit determination software and demonstrate that it has the fidelity and accuracy that the organisation needs in order to operate a spacecraft at a Lagrange point for the first time,” said ESA flight dynamics expert Frank Budnik.

A screenshot shows the surface of the Moon captured by Lander Imager Camera aboard ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 before its successful touchdown.

With the Chandrayaan-3’s lander module Vikram successfully making a touchdown on the moon and the rover Pragyan ramping down, one camera developed by Laboratory for Electro-Optics Systems (LEOS) in Bengaluru has already made an impact while another would be guiding the Pragyan as it traverses the moon’s surface.

The Lander Horizontal Velocity Camera (LHVC), which is onboard the Vikram, has already clicked the first image of the moon during its descent on the lunar surface on Wednesday

LHVC, which was initially developed for the Chandrayaan-2 mission, has also been adopted for the Chandrayaan-3 mission.

“LHVC has an important role of measuring horizontal velocity during the Lander descent phase. It does a complex algorithm calculating the velocity in which the lander is travelling. This instrument provides important information during the descent, ” said Subhalakshmi Krishnamoorthy, who led a team of scientists at LEOS to develop the camera. She has now retired from ISRO.

The second camera is the Navigation camera (NAVCAM) and two of them will be the eyes of the Rover, guiding it as it traverses the moon’s surface.

Both NAVCAMs are fitted in the front of the rover for path planning and obstacle avoidance for the rover.

“The Pragyan Rover has two Navigation cameras fitted in the front of the rover to navigate the Rover in the lunar terrain. NAVCAM-Left & NAVCAM -Right help in path planning and obstacle avoidance, to ensure that there is no rock, there is no obstacle, there is no pit etc., in the path. It is like a human being or robot having eyes, so wherever the rover is going to move there is a path planning which is done based on the stereo images from Navcams” said Ms Krishnamoorthy, the former Deputy director of ISRO. She attributed the success to the sincere and dedicated hard work of her team members.

She added that both the cameras were developed for the Chandrayaan-2 lander and rover. However, the Chandrayaan 2 mission ended in a failure when during the descent, the Vikram lander crashed on the lunar surface. It subsequently lost communication with the ground stations.

• The Lander Horizontal Velocity Camera (LHVC), which is onboard the Vikram, has already clicked the first image of the moon during its descent on the lunar surface on August 23.
• LHVC, which was initially developed for the Chandrayaan-2 mission, has also been adopted for the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
• Another is the Navigation camera (NAVCAM) and two of them will be the eyes of the Rover, guiding it as it traverses the moon’s surface.

See all 55 stories

The ISRO’s LVM3 carrying Chandrayaan-3 at the launch pad before its launch.

Year 2023 seems to be the year of the Moon as a number of lunar missions are scheduled to take place this year.

In the past two months, two missions were launched — India’s second mission to the Moon Chandrayaan-3 on July 14 and Russia’s Luna-25 on August 11.

While India’s Chandrayaan-3 met with success when its lander module safely touched down on the lunar surface and was followed by the rover’s rollout on Thursday, Luna 25 suffered a glitch and crashed on the moon’s surface on August 19.

Apart from these two missions, there are four more lined up for this year.

They include the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) and Lunar Trailblazer from the U.S..

NASA’s CLPS initiative, according to the U.S. space agency, allows rapid acquisition of lunar delivery services from American companies for payloads that advance capabilities for science, exploration or commercial development of the Moon. The Lunar Trailblazer on the other hand is an Orbiter.

The other moon missions include China’s lunar communication and navigation satellite constellation and Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) which is an Orbiter/lander mission.

This year also saw another failure as Japan’s Hakuto-R lander failed to make a moon landing in April. Had the Hakuto-R mission completed its task, it would have been the world’s first commercial soft landing on the lunar surface.

According to ISRO as of July 2023, there are six active lunar orbiters and currently, the only operating rover is China’s Yutu-2 rover released by Chang’e 4, which operates on the far side.

Next year, Beresheet 2 from Israel, U.S.’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER), China’s Lunar Exploration Programme (CLEP) Chang’e 6 and Hakuto-II are expected to be launched.

See all 55 stories

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah (centre) felicitates ISRO Chairperson S. Somnath (right) at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), in Bengaluru on August 24, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

A day after Chandrayaan-3 successfully landed on the lunar surface, making India the first country to achieve a soft landing on the South Pole of the Moon, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah visited the Missions Operations Complex at Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru on August 24.

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He met ISRO Chairperson S. Somnath and felicitated him. He praised the ISRO chief and the team involved in the Chandrayaan mission and congratulated them on their success.

Mr. Siddaramaiah also met the space agency’s Chandrayaan-3 project directors, scientists, engineers and staff and congratulated them.

The achievement triggered celebrations at the ISRO in Bengaluru, where the space agency’s scientists, engineers and staff were joined by mediapersons and others in celebrating the historic event.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit ISRO in Bengaluru on August 26 to discuss with top scientists their future projects.