INDIA, November 15, 2008: At 8:34 p.m. Indian time Friday night, India became the fourth country to land its flag on the Moon. The unmanned lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1 ejected its Moon Impact Probe, which hurtled across the surface of the Moon at 1.5 kilometers per second (3,000 miles per hour), and successfully crash landed near the Moon’s south pole.
Chandrayaan-1 (meaning “moon craft” in Sanskrit) reached its target lunar orbit on Wednesday. The orbiter will remain in a circular orbit 102 kilometres above the Moon’s surface for two years. Its instruments will be gradually commissioned over the next few days. With this landing, India became both the fourth country to place a flag on the Moon and the fifth group to send a spacecraft to the Moon.