As India rises, Chandrayaan-3 success is but a glimpse of what lies in store

On a tight routine to research for a piece on the ongoing BRICS summit in South Africa, I found myself switching frequently between work and live updates on the Chandrayaan-3 mission. Concentrating was tough. Palpable excitement growing by the minute. Almost to the time that the spacecraft’s lander module Vikram made a successful soft landing on the dark side of the moon, which occurred precisely at 6.03 pm (IST), the doorbell rang. The WiFi network at home had been giving me trouble since morning, and two executives, young chaps who arrived to fix the issue, were on a tight schedule since they must attend multiple such ‘calls’ in a day. Today was different. Fixing can wait. Together on TV, we watched India create history, strangers sharing an awkward hug, congratulating each other as India became the fourth nation to soft land on the moon, and the first ever to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole — the nether region devoid of sunlight and a persistent centre of human attention for decades. Let that sink in. There were cheers outside. WhatsApp groups buzzing with excitement. All TV stations live streaming ISRO’s feat. People huddled together around televisions at home, in shops, offices, restaurants, malls or watching intently on mobile. Plebians who perhaps understand nothing of the technicalities of such a complex mission erupted with pride and unbridled joy. Before Wednesday, they had thronged temples and mosques praying for the mission’s success. India is on the moon, and a nation is over the moon. Social media offered slices of euphoria ripping through the country. One post on ‘X’, formerly Twitter, read : “Was in flight. Pilot comes online. ‘Chandrayan has Landed’. Entire flight starts clapping. I don’t know of any other country that celebrates tech like India does. That’s a win.” National Stock Exchange CEO Ashish Chauhan shared a video clip from outside Andheri railway station in Mumbai during the Chandrayaan-3 moon landing. Crowded commuters watching Vikram lander’s touchdown on the lunar surface and breaking out in impromptu celebrations with ‘Vande Mataram’ reverberating across the station. Wednesday’s milestone officially confirmed India’s status as a legitimate space power. It has achieved the impossible, landing a spacecraft on the rugged, uncharted south pole of the moon that scientists believe could hold water reserves and boost the next set of lunar explorations. It is even more incredible to consider that the mission was executed on an estimated budget of $75 million, far less than even Hollywood space thrillers such as Interstellar or Gravity. The complexity of the exercise can be understood from the fact that just a few days ago, Russia’s Luna-25, aiming for the same region in the lunar south pole, spun into an uncontrolled orbit and crashed on the surface due to a technical glitch. Space is unforgivable, even hostile. Earlier Japanese and Israeli private sector attempts to land on the southern polar surface ended in failure. Astronomer Jonathan McDowell posted a compilation of lunar landing attempts that show 30 out of 53 attempts have flopped. To consider this as a momentary exhilaration for a successful mission would be a mistake. The sense of pride for every Indian was accompanied by an innate grasping of a momentous achievement. There is a shared feeling that we are on the cusp of something big, not prominent enough for clear articulation yet but a mood of feverish anticipation, of positivity and buoyancy that an ancient civilisation, long subdued through centuries of colonial, cultural, religious, and economic exploitation, is finally rising to meet its destiny, shaking off the shackles of ennui and mental colonialism with confident steps that are veritable statements of its ambition. Where India must be the envy of the world, despite its huge population, meagre resources and struggles to meet sustainable development goals, is the fact that a scientific achievement to push the boundaries of human knowledge and endeavour — a feat as intellectual and esoteric as it gets — has become the proverbial totem of its progress with a young nation soaking in the excitement and looking forward with unmitigated, abundant optimism. The world’s richest nations, including India’s neighbour that seeks to become the regional and global hegemon, might be ahead of us in terms of per capita GDP, but a young India beats every other nation handsomely with its per capita optimism of a high-growth future and an expectation that other milestones, including economic ones, await. This contrasts with the pessimism in the West, the stagflation in Japan or the concern in China. That over eight million watched live stream of the landing on YouTube alone, a global record, is a testimony to the nation’s thirst for success. Some voices, including bitter ones from Britain, have raised questions over India’s space ambitions when it is struggling with poverty alleviation targets. Yet this is not a mutually exclusive binary. India is a land of great achievements in science and technology. It was Albert Einstein who once said , “We owe a lot to the Indians who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discoveries could have been made.” The thirst for pushing the boundaries of human knowledge, for scientific advancement, for achieving newer milestones despite haemorrhaging top talents to richer nations is a burning ambition baked deep into the nation’s collective consciousness. That spirit is now unleashing itself as India slowly pulls itself up from the ground. We have seen but a glimpse of what lies in store. The scientific gains from Vikram Lander’s ‘Pragyan’ rover will unfold over weeks, even months. It also sets India up for crewed lunar missions in the near future and is confident of the upcoming Aditya-L1 mission next month, which plans to study the sun, or NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, or NISAR, next year. The biggest achievement of Chandrayaan-3, however, will be that millions of young Indians intrigued by space and aiming for the sky may now aspire to join ISRO too, not just NASA. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .