India recently joined the race to achieve the first successful moon landing of 2023 by launching a rocket from its eastern coast. This mission, named Chandrayaan-3, aims to land a rover and a lander on the moon’s largely unexplored south pole, making India the fourth country, following the U.S., Russia, and China, to accomplish a soft moon landing. Chandrayaan-3’s spacecraft has already entered the moon’s orbit and begun transmitting its initial images.
Remarkably, the entire Chandrayaan-3 mission is projected to cost only $74 million (₹6.15 billion), according to ISRO’s 2020 estimate. This is significantly lower than the cost of previous missions like Chandrayaan-2, which had a slightly higher budget of $96.5 million (₹8 billion) due to the inclusion of an operational orbiter that continues to circle the moon.
A noteworthy point of comparison is the budget: Chandrayaan-3’s $74 million is dwarfed by the price tags of other space endeavors. For instance, NASA’s MAVEN Mars mission cost an estimated $671 million, and the European Space Agency Mars Express had a budget of roughly $164 million (€150 million). This stark contrast even extends to cinematic references, where India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others liken India’s budget to that of blockbuster films like Gravity, Interstellar, and The Martian. Notably, Chandrayaan-3’s budget is only a fraction of what was spent on these movies.
Interestingly, an earlier attempt to land on the moon this year by the Japanese private space company Ispace ended in failure when its Hakuto-R rover crashed on the lunar surface.
As India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission prepares to touch down near the moon’s south pole on August 23, it faces competition from Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft, scheduled to launch soon. Luna-25 also aims for a south pole landing and is following a relatively expedited timeline, including a five-day flight to the moon, followed by orbiting for five to seven days before descending to the lunar surface.
