Students with painted faces surround a replica of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft in Chennai on August 22, 2023. (Photo by R.Satish Babu / AFP)
Bengaluru, India: India readied Wednesday to become the first nation to land a spacecraft on the Moon's south pole, days after a Russian probe crashed in the same region.
The world's most populous nation is closing in on milestones set by global space powers such as the United States and Russia, conducting many of its missions at much-lower price tags.
Chandrayaan-3, which means "Mooncraft" in Sanskrit, is scheduled to touch down shortly after 6:00 pm India time (1230 GMT) near the little-explored lunar south pole.
A previous Indian effort failed in 2019, but former K. Sivan, a former head of the country's space agency, said the latest photos from the lander gave every indication that the final leg of the voyage would succeed.
"It is giving some encouragement that we will be able to achieve the landing mission without any problem," he told AFP.
Sivan added that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had made corrections after the failure of four years ago, when scientists lost contact with that lunar module moments before its slated landing.
"Chandrayaan-3 is going to go with more ruggedness," he said. "We expect that everything will go smoothly."
The mission has captivated public attention since launching nearly six weeks ago in front of thousands of cheering spectators.
"India reaches for the Moon," The Times of India front-page headline read Wednesday, with the hoped-for lunar landing dominating local news.
Chandrayaan-3 took much longer to reach the Moon than the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s, which arrived in a matter of days.
India is using rockets much less powerful than the ones the United States used back then, meaning the probe had to orbit the Earth several times to gain speed before embarking on its month-long journey.
The lander, Vikram, which means "valour" in Sanskrit, detached from its propulsion module last week and has been sending images of the Moon's surface since entering lunar orbit on August 5.
Once it lands, a solar-powered rover will explore the surface and transmit data to Earth over its two-week lifespan.
'Smooth sailing'
A day ahead of the landing, the ISRO said on social media the landing was proceeding on schedule, describing it as "smooth sailing".
India has a comparatively low-budget space programme, but one that has grown considerably in size and momentum since it first sent a probe to orbit the Moon in 2008.
The latest mission has a price tag of $74.6 million -- far lower than those of other countries, and a testament to India's frugal space engineering.
Experts say India can keep costs low by copying and adapting existing technology, and thanks to an abundance of highly skilled engineers who earn a fraction of their foreign counterparts' wages.
In 2014, India became the first Asian nation to put a craft into orbit around Mars and is slated to launch a three-day crewed mission into Earth orbit by next year.
'Very, very important'
Sivan, the former ISRO chief, said India's efforts to explore the relatively unmapped lunar south pole would make a "very, very important" contribution to scientific knowledge.
Only Russia, the United States and China have previously achieved controlled landings on the Moon.
Russia launched a lunar probe in August -- its first in nearly half a century.
If successful, it would have beaten Chandrayaan-3 by a matter of days to become the first mission from any nation to make a controlled landing around the south pole.
But Luna-25 crashed on Saturday after an unspecified incident as it prepared to descend.
