India Landed on the Moon’s South Pole for Less Than a Boeing 737 Costs. Russia Crashed Trying Three Days Earlier.

The south pole of the Moon is not a place anyone has ever been.

The region is defined by permanent shadow. Craters that have not seen sunlight in billions of years trap water ice at their floors. That ice, confirmed by multiple orbiting spacecraft over the past two decades, is the resource that makes the Moon strategically relevant: a potential source of drinking water, breathable oxygen, and hydrogen fuel for spacecraft. NASA geologist Paul Spudis called it the most valuable piece of real estate in the solar system. Every one of NASA’s proposed Artemis programme landing sites is located in the south polar region.

On August 19, 2023, Russia tried to be the first country to reach it.

Luna-25 was Russia’s first lunar mission in 47 years. It had launched in mid-August and entered lunar orbit successfully. On the 19th, controllers at Roscosmos attempted to adjust the spacecraft’s orbit in preparation for landing. Something went wrong. The engine burn lasted longer than commanded. The spacecraft entered a collision trajectory and struck the lunar surface.

Russia’s return to the Moon was over before it reached the surface.

Three days later, on August 23, 2023, at 6:04 in the evening Indian Standard Time, ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 lander separated from its propulsion module, fired its engines in a precisely calculated sequence, and settled onto the lunar surface near 69 degrees south latitude.

ISRO had previously failed. Chandrayaan-2’s lander had crashed during its final descent in 2019, less than two kilometres from the surface, due to a software error in the braking sequence. The scientists who worked that mission spent four years understanding what had gone wrong and designing a lander that would survive where the first had not.

The 2023 lander survived. India became the first country in human history to achieve a controlled landing near the Moon’s south pole.

The entire Chandrayaan-3 mission cost approximately $75 million. A Boeing 737–800, the standard mid-size commercial aircraft, has a list price of around $90 million.

ISRO landed on the most contested piece of ground in the solar system for less than the price of a commercial jet.