China does not recognise India's conquest of the Moon's South Pole as the rover landed 600 km away from it

Chinese scientists disagree that India was the first country in history to land on the South Pole of the Moon. Moreover, according to them, the Chandrayaan-3 mission did not even conquer the circumpolar region.

Here's What We Know

In mid-summer 2023, a GSLV Mk III rocket sent the Pragyan rover with the Vikram landing module to the Moon as part of the Chandrayaan-3 mission. A few weeks later, the lunar rover landed on our planet's natural satellite.

One of the heads of the Chinese lunar programme Ouyang Ziyuan believes that technically Chandrayaan-3 is not the conquest of neither the South Pole nor the circumpolar region of the Moon. This is due to the fact that the landing module landed at 69° south latitude, 600 kilometres from the South Pole.

NASA considers the south polar region of the Moon to be the area between 80° and 90° south latitude. China defines it as between 88° and 90° south latitude because of the 1.5° tilt of the axis of rotation.

Ouyang Ziyuan cites Indian scientific texts that nowhere mention the pole or the sub-polar regions. Thus, the first spacecraft to land at the South Pole of the Moon could be a Chinese rover, which will go there in 2026.

Source: scmp