The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chose to land Chandrayaan in the south pole of moon because of the availability of more resources for fuel, said Chandrayaan-3 Project Director P. Veeramuthuvel on November 27.

He was delivering the 6th memorial lecture of Manikam Ramaswami at the Thiagarajar School of Management (TSM). During an interaction with students, Mr. Veeramuthuvel said India had a road map for its space programs till 2047.

The ISRO wanted to set up its space station by 2035. The water molecules could be used as a resource for fuel and the organisation could make the best of the moon’s escaping velocity of 2.38 km/second to reach other planets, making the moon a gateway.

Stating that any planet exploration was only for looking for new resources, he said if Helium-3 was tapped it could serve for future generations for producing power.

“Lunar 25 was targeting closer to the point targeted by the ISRO and all future missions are targeted towards the pole,” he added.

India chose to land in the south pole in the first time itself due to the availability of more resources.

‘Many A Challenge’

Mr. Veeramuthuvel said the ISRO had a review process at every single stage, and during the Chandrayaan-3 mission, the team faced lot of challenges.

“Since it was a second attempt, failure was not an option. The only agenda we had was to have a soft landing, so everything was led towards that,” he said.

Chandrayaan-3 had shown that one should not view failure as a setback, but as a lesson from which one could learn and come back stronger, he added.