Chinese scientist Ouyang Ziyuan, who is also called the father of China’s lunar exploration program, has now made a big claim. He has declared that ISRO’s recent path-breaking achievement of their lunar landing is exaggerated. We all know that India’s Chandrayaan-3 landed on the moon surface on August 23 after starting its journey from Sriharikota on July 14.
The Chinese scientist has now claimed to a Chinese-language newspaper, Science Times, that the landing point, at 69 degrees south latitude, is nowhere near the south pole where it was told to be. According to him, the south pole is said to be in the middle of 88.5 and 90 degrees.
And as reported by Bloomberg, 69 degrees south on Earth would be within the Antarctic Circle, but the circle on the lunar surface is much closer to the pole.
Ziyuan told the newspaper that the landing point of India’s Chandrayaan-3 is nowhere near the lunar south pole. He further said that the landing did not occur in the lunar south pole region, and neither did it near the lunar south pole region. He also stated that India’s claim of a lunar landing at the south pole is entirely wrong.
He said in his statement that India’s Chandrayaan-3 landing was 619 km away from the polar region.
However, Ziyuan is not the first Chinese scientist who has questioned India’s Chandrayaan-3’s acquisition. Previously, Pang Zhihao, a Beijing-based, well-known space expert, made a similar statement to the Global Times. In his statement,
He said that China is further developing in several fields. China has been able to send orbiters and landers directly into the Earth-Moon transfer orbit since the launch of their Chang’e-2 in 2010, something that India is unable to do due to the small ability of their launch vehicles, he added.
He also further informed me that the Chinese engine is also much more developed than the one India uses. And their lunar rover is bigger, too. According to him, India’s Pragyan has a lifetime of only one lunar day and is unable to bear the lunar nights, but China’s Yutu-2 rover has the record of serving for the largest time on the lunar surface as it is nuclear-powered.1
China and India’s competition on almost everything, which also involves space exploration, is very well known.
However, even with the ability China brags about, India has progressed a long way compared to any other spacecraft, including Russia, the US, and China.
Russia’s Moon mission, Luna-25, programmed to arrive pre-Chandrayaan-3, bumped into the lunar surface. Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years occurred on August 19, as it spun out of control, collided into the lunar surface, and left a 10-meter-wide crater on the moon.
While China’s mission touched down 45 degrees south in 2019 and the US’s Surveyor 7 landed at about 41 degrees south in 1968,
The arrival at the south pole of the moon is of greater interest to countries. There is powerful proof that the lunar south pole has the existence of ice molecules, which can be of great importance for future space explorations.