By IANS,
Bangalore : India Friday became the fourth country on Earth to land a probe on the moon. “We have given moon to India,” a beaming and excited chief of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) G. Madhavan Nair said minutes after the moon impact probe (MIP) landed on the lunar surface Friday night.
“The moon has been very favourable to us all through. We have travelled all the way to the moon,” Nair told a crowded press conference at ISRO here as his fellow space scientists applauded.
The MIP has already sent “beautiful images with high resolution of the moon and their analysis will now begin”, Nair said.
The around 35-kg MIP with three instruments took the images as it hurtled towards the lunar surface detaching from India’s first unamanned lunar spacecraft Chandrayaan-1.
Chandrayaan-1 released the MIP from 100 km above the moon.
The MIP is painted with the Indian tricolour on its four sides.
The successful landing of the MIP makes India the fourth country in the world to land man-made objects on the celestial body about 384,000 km away from the Earth.