India's Chandrayaan-3 prepares to land on Moon: Here are other countries that have achieved this feat

India launched its third moon mission, Chandrayaan-3, on July 14, in an attempt to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface. A successful mission will make India only the fourth country, after the US, former Soviet Union, and China, to manage a controlled landing on the moon.

Chandrayaan-3

The LVM3-M4 launch vehicle of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh carrying a propulsion module, lander module, and a rover. The two-metre tall (6.6 feet) lander will be used to deploy the rover near the south pole of the moon where it will conduct scientific exploration.

Now, let us take a look at the countries that have achieved a soft landing on the moon:

USSR

In 1966, the former Soviet Union became the first country to manage a soft landing on the moon. Its Luna 9 spacecraft launched on January 31, 1966, from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, and reached the moon on February 3.

After landing, the spacecraft also sent the first-ever pictures from the moon that offered four panoramic views of the lunar surface and showed nearby rocks. The probe later took more panoramic photos.

US

Four months after Luna 9, the US became the second country to soft land on the moon. NASA’s 2,200-pound Surveyor 1 spacecraft took off on May 30, 1966, from the Cape Kennedy Air Force Station in Florida. It soft landed on the moon on June 2. It sent back thousands of pictures of its landing site and operated for longer than its design life. The mission helped confirm that a spacecraft could safely land on the lunar surface and return crucial scientific information.

Surveyor 1 carried a television camera with it and sent images from the surface with a filter wheel containing red, green, and blue filters. This allowed engineers on Earth to reconstruct the colour images of the moon’s surface. The first image showed parts of the spacecraft, its landing pads, and dark lunar soil.

China

China is the third nation to perform a soft landing on the moon. The country sent its Chang'e 3 spacecraft atop the Changzheng-3B rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre on December 1, 2013. The spacecraft soft landed on Mare Imbrium on December 14 after which the Yutu rover rolled out on the lunar surface.

• Chandrayaan-3 lifts off: What's next in India's mission to the moon?