India’s Chandrayaan-3 – the word for “moon craft” in Sanskrit – achieved soft landing at 6:04 p.m. local time on Wednesday, after Russia’s Luna-25 crashed into the moon on Sunday.

Before today’s landing, the agency said it had perfected the art of making it to the moon, “but it is the landing that the agency is working on,” according to The Associated Press.

But this time – success…

Chandrayaan-3 Mission: ‘India, I reached my destination and you too!’ : Chandrayaan-3 Chandrayaan-3 has successfully soft-landed on the moon !. Congratulations, India!#Chandrayaan_3#Ch3

— ISRO (@isro) August 23, 2023

A rover, named Pragyan, or wisdom, is set to analyze the chemical makeup of the moon’s surface and search for water over the course of one lunar day, which is equivalent to 14 days on Earth.

The timing of the successful landing – in the middle of the BRICS Summit, and just days after Russia’s epic fail – is not lost of most as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said:

Only the United States, the former Soviet Union and China have made soft landings on the surface before.

Finally, as we detailed previously, China, which along with the U.S. is a leading country in space technology, has agreed to pursue a project to establish a human settlement on the moon together with Russia, but this weekend’s crash of the Luna-25 could mean that Moscow, which is the junior partner in the relationship, has less to offer than originally assumed.

China has accelerated its space program in recent years, and is currently the only country (known) to have landed anything on the moon in the 21st century. The CCP also landed a lunar probe on the moon’s far side for the first time in history in 2019.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to bolster the country’s place among the world’s space faring nations and in June India signed the Artemis Accords, a US-backed initiative with more than two dozen other countries to govern joint missions and civilian space exploration.