NEW DELHI, Aug 24 (Reuters) — The moon rover of India’s Chandrayaan-3 exited the spacecraft on Thursday to begin exploring the surface of the lunar south pole and conducting experiments, and was braced for new challenges, the space agency chief said.

The spacecraft landed on the unexplored south pole of the moon on Wednesday, making India the first country to achieve this feat just days after Russia’s Luna-25 failed in a similar mission.

The soft, textbook touchdown by the lander after a failed attempt in 2019 sparked widespread jubilation and celebration in the world’s most populous country. The media hailed the historic landing as India’s biggest scientific feat.

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India has joined the U.S., China and the former USSR in successfully soft-landing a spacecraft on the surface of the moon. The uncrewed Chandrayaan-3 mission has also become the first to land close to the moon’s south pole.

About 15 minutes after initiating its Automatic Landing Sequence (ALS), Chandrayaan-3’s Lander Module (LM) touched down around 8:34 a.m. EDT. Images were streamed live on YouTube from the Indian Space Research Agency (ISRO) control room in Bengaluru, India.

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India’s uncrewed Chandrayaan-3 mission successfully landed today close to the moon’s south pole. It joins an elite club of only four nations to soft-land on the moon.

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