With Chandrayaan-3's successful landing, Let's have a look at key findings of two previous Lunar missions

ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 successfully soft-landed on Moon’s south pole successfully, an unchartered territory with lot more potential to explore.

At 6.04pm on 23rd August, 2023, India made history by becoming the first country to land the a spacecraft on the Moon's south pole, couple of days after the crash of Russian Luna-25. However, the journey of India's 3rd Lunar mission was not that easy. ISRO has taken lot of learnings from previous two missions. ISRO chief said the Vikram lander has carried additional solar panels on other surfaces to ensure that it generates power irrespective of type of landing. Following are the key findings of last two Indian lunar mission.

About Chandrayaan-1:

Chandrayaan-1 was launched on October 22, 2008, marking India's first lunar exploration. Despite its earlier than expected conclusion, the Chandrayaan-1 paved the way for upcoming lunar missions of ISRO. This mission carried 11 scientific payloads developed in India, USA, UK, Germany, Sweden and Bulgaria. It was orbiting the earth's satellite at an altitude of 100 km. Chandrayaan-1 was operational for 312 days before unprecedented loss of contact on August, 2009.

Key findings of Chandrayaan-1:

The major finding of Chandrayaan-1 is confirming the presence of water molecule. This mission helped in elucidating the presence of minerals like magnesium, aluminium, calcium, and iron, providing insights into lunar geology.

Water molecules were detected on the polar regions of moon. Eventually, these findings helped the lunar research regarding resource utilisation and possible human habitation.

As per scientists at NASA, "earth’s oxygen could be driving the formation of hematite. Earth’s magnetotail (elongated region of the magnetosphere of the earth) ferries oxygen to the moon and also blocks 99% of solar wind during certain periods of the moon’s orbit.

The solar wind, a stream of charged particles that flows out from the sun, bombards earth and the moon with hydrogen."

"Hydrogen makes it harder for hematite to form. It is a reducer, meaning it adds electrons to the materials it interacts with. That’s the opposite of what is needed to make hematite or iron to rust, which requires an oxidizer, which removes electrons," the statement added.

About Chandrayaan 2:

ISRO launched Chandrayaan-2 in 2019. The spacecraft, even after entering the lunar orbit on August 20, 2019, the Vikram lander failed to have soft landing and eventually crashed on 7th September, 2019. Software glitch was stated as the reason of crashlanding. The orbiter of Chandrayaan-2 carried eight payloads for mapping the moon surface and to examine the outermost atmosphere of the Moon.

Findings from Chandrayaan-2:

In spite of Vikram lander's unfortunate outcome, the orbiter of Chandrayaan-2 is still operational, which has made significant contribution for Chandrayaan-3 mission.

According to 2022 publications in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, ISRO researchers and scientists reported that "the orbiter detected and mapped an abundance of sodium on the Moon's surface. Using the large area X-ray spectrometer, CLASS," researchers at ISRO observed "the presence of two types of sodium atoms — those loosely bound to the surface and those within minerals. The influence of solar radiation liberates loosely-bound sodium atoms, contributing to the Moon's exosphere."

Even "if everything fails, if all the sensors fail, nothing works, still it (Vikram) will make a landing. That’s how it has been designed — provided that the propulsion system works well," ISRO chief Somanath said a month ago. And that's what happened. With every part is still operational, Chandrayaan-3 is set to make some exciting contribution in space science research.