What an incredible moment: Sundar Pichai on India's historic lunar landing

Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Wednesday congratulated Indian space agency Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the country for the successful Chandrayaan-3 mission.

"What an incredible moment! Congratulations to @isro for the successful landing of #Chandrayaan3 on the moon," he said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. "Today India became the first country to successfully achieve a soft landing on the southern polar region of the moon," he added.



The ISRO established a communication link with its moon lander that is now on the lunar soil.

"The communication link is established between the Chandrayaan-3 Lander and MOX-ISTRAC, Bengaluru," ISRO said. The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft comprises a propulsion module (weighing 2,148 kg), a lander (1,723.89 kg) and a rover (26 kg).


Earlier, ISRO had said the moon lander had established communication links with the Chandrayaan-2 mission's orbiter which is circling the moon since 2019.

In other words, the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter will be the backup communication channel for ISRO with the lander.

The mission life of the lander and the rover is 1 Lunar day or 14 Earth days, ISRO said.

The Chandrayaan-3 was put into orbit on July 14 in a copybook style by India's heavy lift rocket LVM3.

The spacecraft completed orbiting around the Earth and headed towards the moon on August 1.