India is looking to make history on Wednesday with its third lunar mission set to land on the Moon, the BBC reports.
If Chandrayaan-3 is successful, India will be the first country to land near the Moon’s little-explored south pole.
One of its major goals is to hunt for water-based ice, which scientists say could support human habitation on the Moon in future.
India’s attempt comes just days after Russia’s Luna-25 crashed while trying to touch down in the same region.
If successful, it will also be only the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon – the US, the former Soviet Union and China have all landed near the equator.
India’s attempt to land its Chandrayaan-2 mission near the south pole in 2019 was unsuccessful – it crashed into the lunar surface.
The spacecraft with an orbiter, lander and a rover lifted off on 14 July from the Sriharikota space center in south India.
The lander – called Vikram after Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) founder Vikram Sarabhai – carries within its belly the 26kg rover named Pragyaan, the Sanskrit word for wisdom.
