India is very excited about the achievements of Chandrayaan-3 on the Moon. China has a different opinion
“The landing site was not at the south pole of the Moon, nor near the Antarctic polar region,” claims one of China’s greatest experts.
August 23 was a day of celebration at the offices of ISRO , India’s space agency, one of those in which leaves are thrown into the air, hugs and applause are exchanged, and hopefully a bottle of champagne is popped. Normal. ISRO claimed that day a historic feat, the same one in which its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, had failed shortly before : reaching the lunar south pole.
August 23 was a day of celebration at the offices of ISRO , India’s space agency, one of those in which leaves are thrown into the air, hugs and applause are exchanged, and hopefully a bottle of champagne is popped. Normal. ISRO claimed that day a historic feat, the same one in which its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, had failed shortly before : reaching the lunar south pole.
“India has gone where no other country has gone,” celebrated its prime minister after the Chandrayaan-3 moon landing, showing an enthusiasm that has only grown with the passing of the weeks. Problem: China sees things a little differently. In the opinion of one of its greatest experts, India has not even come close to the South Pole.
What happened? That in China the Indian achievement is viewed with a certain skepticism and without the heated enthusiasm shown by ISRO or Narendra Modi. A few days ago one of the most respected scientists in the Asian giant, Ouyang Ziyuan , made statements to the publication Science Times that considerably lowered the scope of the Chandrayaan-3 mission. In the opinion of the Chinese expert, his Indian colleagues may have managed to land on the moon, but not at the south pole.
What exactly did he say? If we stick to the figures, the Indian rover reached a latitude that is outside the lunar south pole. At least if we speak strictly speaking. “The Chandrayaan-3 landing site was not at the south pole of the Moon, nor in the polar region of the south pole of the Moon, nor was it ‘near the Antarctic polar region’,” says the Chinese expert, categorically . .
Their words have achieved international repercussion for what they say but above all for who says it: Ziyuan is a prestigious cosmochemist and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Indian Express claims that he even serves as chief scientist of the country’s Lunar Exploration Programme.
But… What is it based on? In calculations that he has presented in detail. The ISRO mission landed at 69.373 degrees south latitude and 32.3119 degrees east longitude. With these coordinates on the table, Ziyuan assures that the Indian device was located in the southern lunar hemisphere, but not the polar region, which would be located between latitudes 88.5 and 90 degrees . For the CAS scholar, Chandrayaan-3 was no less than 619 kilometers away from the polar region.
The key to Ziyuan is in the characteristics of the Moon: on Earth, 69 degrees south is already located in the Antarctic Circle, but things change on our natural satellite. Souht China Morning Post specifies that the Earth’s axis of rotation is inclined about 23.5º with respect to the plane of the orbit it describes around the Sun, so we consider that the south pole is between 66.5 and 90 degrees south. The inclination of our satellite is different and its polar region is smaller.
Are you the only one who thinks like this? No. The Hong Kong newspaper includes , for example, the statements of Richard de Grijs, from Macquarie University in Sydney, who also believes that the Indian mission would have landed on the moon in an area beyond the south pole: “Although the media refers with frequently referred to as the probe’s landing site as the ‘polar region,’ Chandrayyan-3’s location is not in the lunar Antarctic Circle, defined as the geographic region southernmost than 80 degrees south.”
NASA would also consider the polar region to be between 80 and 90 degrees south, which did not prevent its boss, Nill Nelson, from publicly congratulating the Indian space agency on August 23 for its lunar “landing at the south pole.” .
Does context matter? Of course. Firstly so as not to blur the merit of ISRO. Regardless of whether or not it has reached the lunar south pole, what is undeniable is that with its Chandrayaan-3 mission it has achieved considerable success: it has joined the small list of countries that have reached the Moon and was successful in a task in which that Russia ended up failing . Another merit is that with Chandrayaan-3 the Indian agency has managed to take a record from China: that of the southernmost moon landing.
In 1968, a NASA probe, Surveyor 7, reached about 41 degrees south and in 2019 China’s successful Chang’e 4 landed at 45. “Anyone can get closer if they have the technical capacity. India has gotten closer than anyone else, but China can get closer next time and [it would be] great, fantastic if they did,” Quentin Parker, director of HKU’s Space Research Laboratory, told SCMP .
There is more? Yes. Ziyuan’s words come in a broader and more complex context marked by two equally crucial realities. The first is the difficult relationship between New Delhi and Beijing, which goes beyond the space race and has important territorial , economic and even geopolitical implications .
The other key is the tremendous importance of the south pole of the Moon, without which it is difficult to understand the effort of the superpowers to reach the southernmost region of the satellite. Aside from the symbolic value of being the first space agency to reach the satellite’s south pole, scientists hope to find a valuable resource there to boost their spatial expansion: ice reserves .