India's Moon landers: from Chandrayaan's first steps to a crewed landing in 2040

Image: Illustration created with AI

In under two decades India has gone from its first lunar orbiter to the first soft landing near the Moon's south pole. Here is how the Chandrayaan programme got there, and what ISRO plans next.

When the Vikram lander touched down on 23 August 2023, India became the fourth country to make a soft landing on the Moon, after the Soviet Union, the United States and China. It was also the first spacecraft from any nation to land softly near the lunar south pole, the region every major space agency now wants to explore. That moment was the result of twenty years of steady work by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and it is only the start of a much longer plan.

Chandrayaan-1: an orbiter, a probe and water

The Chandrayaan programme takes its name from the Sanskrit for "Moon craft". It was announced in 2003, and Chandrayaan-1 launched on a PSLV rocket on 22 October 2008. Late in development, former president A. P. J. Abdul Kalam suggested that an orbiter alone was not enough, so ISRO added a small Moon Impact Probe.

On 14 November 2008 the probe struck the surface near Shackleton crater at the south pole, making India the fifth country to reach the lunar surface. As it fell, its instruments picked up signs of water in the Moon's thin atmosphere. NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, carried on the same orbiter, then found the signature of water across the surface, a result announced in September 2009. Later analysis of the same data, published in 2018, gave some of the strongest evidence yet for exposed water ice in the polar craters. It is a big reason the south pole matters so much today.

Chandrayaan-2: so close

The second mission was more ambitious: an orbiter, a lander called Vikram, named after Vikram Sarabhai, the founder of India's space programme, and a small rover called Pragyan, meaning "wisdom". A planned partnership with Russia, which was to supply the lander, fell apart, so India built the whole spacecraft itself. ISRO even created artificial craters at Challakere in Karnataka to test the landing systems.

Chandrayaan-2 launched on the heavy LVM3 rocket on 22 July 2019. On 6 September, Vikram was descending normally until it was about 2.1 km above the surface, when it drifted off course and crashed. ISRO later traced the failure to higher than expected engine thrust, limits on how fast the lander could turn, and a very small 500 m landing zone.

The mission was far from wasted. The orbiter is still working, and its high-resolution camera, able to pick out objects 25 cm across, has been mapping the surface and scouting landing sites ever since.

Chandrayaan-3: a landing built to survive failure

For Chandrayaan-3, ISRO took what it called a "failure-based" approach: instead of designing for everything going right, it designed the lander to cope with things going wrong. The central fifth engine was removed, the legs were strengthened, more fuel was added, and the lander could turn far faster. Most importantly, the landing zone grew from 500 m square to an area about 4 km by 2.5 km.

Chandrayaan-3 launched on 14 July 2023. On 23 August, Vikram set down at about 69 degrees south, a spot now officially named Statio Shiv Shakti. India marks the day each year as National Space Day.

Pragyan rolled down a ramp and began exploring, leaving the national emblem and ISRO's logo printed in the dust with its wheels. Over one lunar day the two spacecraft took the first temperature readings deep into the soil near the south pole and confirmed the presence of sulphur in the surface. Before shutting down for the freezing lunar night, Vikram fired its engines and hopped about 40 cm into the air before landing again. It was a small test with a big purpose: proving that a spacecraft can lift off from the Moon, which India will need for its next mission.

What comes next

ISRO now has a clear step-by-step plan for the Moon.

**Chandrayaan-4 (around 2027):** a sample return mission. Two LVM3 launches will send four modules that join up in lunar orbit. One will land near Statio Shiv Shakti, collect soil and rock, and launch it back up to be carried home to Earth. If it works, India will join the United States, the Soviet Union and China as the only nations to bring back pieces of the Moon.

**Chandrayaan-5 / LUPEX (around 2028):** a joint mission with Japan's space agency JAXA, approved by the Indian government in March 2025. Japan will provide the rover and launch it on its H3 rocket, while India builds the lander. The aim is to look for water ice near the south pole, drill into the soil, and survive for months, through the long lunar nights.

**Chandrayaan-6, 7 and 8 (the 2030s):** uncrewed missions to test the lander and systems that astronauts will later use, along with a communications relay around the Moon.

**A crewed landing by 2040:** ISRO's roadmap has a crewed lunar orbit flight in the late 2030s, followed by the first Indian astronauts walking on the Moon in 2040. ISRO has said its robotic missions will carry on alongside the crewed ones.

Why it matters

India has shown that a carefully run, relatively low-cost programme can reach the Moon's most sought-after region. The whole Chandrayaan programme has cost a fraction of a single Apollo mission. India has also signed the Artemis Accords, and its findings about water, temperature and soil at the south pole will help every agency and company planning to go there, including NASA's Artemis landings.

From a small probe that crashed on purpose to a lander that hopped on command, India's lunar landers have turned the south pole from a mystery into a destination. The next step is to bring a piece of it home.