Editorial | No room for weapons in the latest space race
- As India joins the elite landings club after Russian woe, more countries will be looking beyond the stars to fuel new and old rivalries
August has been a busy month for moon exploration. India has successfully landed a spacecraft on the lunar south pole. Just before that, though, Russia crash-landed its own craft on the surface of the moon and lost communication.
There is a sense of deja vu that another space race is on, except this time, it will involve multiple nations, not just two Cold War rivals.
Chandrayaan-3 arrived unscathed on the tough lunar terrain, making India the fourth nation to successfully perform a controlled landing.
It picked a site strewn with rocks and craters and, because its landing required positioning the spacecraft at a different angle from that used in previous landings, it was a technical accomplishment that rivalled China’s Chang’e 4 lander and rover, which touched down on the moon’s far side in January 2019.
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India releases new images of its Chandrayaan-3 rover exploring surface of lunar south pole
Probably not by coincidence, Chinese scientists released an image of the layers beneath the surface of the far side of the moon using data from the Yutu 2 rover. It was likely intended to be a reminder that China has been exploring the surface for years now.
