The soft landing occurred at 18:03 IST (08:33 ET). It also means India is the fourth nation to ever land on the lunar surface, after the former Soviet Union, the US, and China.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) designed Chandrayaan-3 to search for vast deposits of ice water on the lunar surface, which could one day be utilized to make sustainable human habitats on the Moon.
India's Chandrayaan-3 mission makes history
The world's leading space agencies, including NASA, Roscosmos, and China's space administration, have set their sights on the lunar south pole as scientists believe there are large amounts of water ice hidden beneath lunar soil and inside shadowed craters in the region.
India has made a very strong case for joining their ranks by performing the first successful landing on this coveted region of the lunar surface, which is tricky to land on due to its rough terrain and the orbital trajectory required.
Prior to Chandrayaan-3, Japan, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates had all tried and failed to land on the lunar south pole.
India had also failed on its previous attempt during the Chandrayaan-2 mission in 2019, though ISRO has stated it collected a wealth of valuable data during that mission that made the Chandrayaan-3 landing possible.
Thanks to that data, ISRO improved the software for Chandrayaan-3, giving the Virkam lander a more adaptable algorithm. The space agency also made hardware changes, including adding sturdier legs for the lander.
The Virkam soft landing comes just days after Russia's Luna-25 lander crashed on the Moon and failed to perform a soft landing on the lunar south pole. That failure, by the first nation to ever land a spacecraft on the Moon, highlighted the complexity of a lunar south pole landing.
Now that it has successfully landed on the lunar surface, the Chandrayaan-3 mission will aim to carry out one of its main scientific objectives, which is to seek out ice water that could support human habitats on the Moon in the future.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission's Vikram lander will soon roll out a solar-powered rover named Pragyan — Pragyan is Sanskrit for "wisdom", while Vikram means "valor". Both will spend roughly one lunar day, or about 14 Earth days, exploring the lunar south pole and beaming back data before their batteries run dry.
India's Chandrayaan-3 success for "all of humanity"
In an address just after the landing, India's Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi said "India's successful moon mission is not just India's alone", adding that it "belongs to all of humanity".
"It will help Moon missions by other countries in the future" and shows "we can all aspire for the Moon and beyond," he continued.
India reached the lunar south pole with a relatively low budget of 6 billion rupees ($75 million). As one online commenter pointed out before the soft landing took place, this is considerably less than the $165 million budget for the sci-fi movie Interstellar — that post prompted SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to tweet, "good for India!"
As a point of reference, NASA's Artemis I mission last year, which sent an uncrewed capsule around the Moon and back, cost approximately $4 billion.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission launched on July 14 aboard a Launch Vehicle Mark 3 (LM-3) rocket from a spaceport in Sriharikota in southern India. On August 5, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft entered lunar orbit and beamed images of the lunar surface back to Earth.
From that elliptical orbit around the moon, the spacecraft performed several maneuvers taking it roughly 93 miles (150 kilometers) above the lunar surface.
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