India's moon lander Vikram soft lands on the moon for the second time: ISRO

• According to the space agency, the kick start gives enthusiasm for lunar sample return in the future and also for manned missions to the moon.
• ISRO said, the rover has found the presence of oxygen, aluminum, sulphur and other materials near the lunar south pole.
• India on August 23 reached the Moon with its lander safely landing on the lunar soil in a text book style.

According to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Vikram soft landed on the lunar soil for a second time. In a post on social media platform X, ISRO said: "Vikram Lander exceeded its mission objectives. It successfully underwent a hop experiment." "On command, it fired the engines, elevated itself by about 40 cm as expected and landed safely at a distance of 30 - 40 cm away."

According to the space agency, the kick start gives enthusiasm for lunar sample return in the future and also for manned missions to the moon.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission's lander is named after Vikram Sarabhai (1919-1971), who is widely regarded as the father of the Indian space programme.

"All systems performed nominally and are healthy. Deployed Ramp, ChaSTE and ILSA were folded back and redeployed successfully after the experiment," ISRO said.

Sometime back, the Indian space agency uploaded the video Pragyan moving on the social media platform X and said: "It feels as though a child is playfully frolicking in the yards of Chandamama, while the mother watches affectionately. Isn't it?"

Now perhaps with the playful kid going to sleep the mother is hopping around!

Later the rover rolled down and started doing experiments.

ISRO said, the rover has found the presence of oxygen, aluminium, sulphur and other materials near the lunar south pole, while investigation regarding the presence of hydrogen is underway.

The historic moon landing on August 23 India on August 23 reached the moon with its lander safely landing on the lunar soil in a textbook style becoming the first country to land a spacecraft near the South pole of the moon.The ₹600 crore Chandrayaan-3 mission was launched on July 14 onboard Launch Vehicle Mark-III (LVM-3) rocket, for a 41-day voyage to reach near the lunar south pole.

Polar regions of the moon are a very different terrain due to the environment and the difficulties they present and therefore have remained unexplored. All the previous spacecraft to have reached the Moon landed in the equatorial region, a few degrees latitude north or south of the lunar equator.

The Moon's South pole region is also being explored because there could be a possibility of presence of water in permanently shadowed areas around it.