New frontiers reached in space

It's been an important few months for space exploration.

From a historic Moon landing to samples from a distant space rock being returned to Earth, the past few months have seen a series of remarkable milestones in space exploration.

On 23 August, India became the first country to land a spacecraft near the Moon’s south pole. The Chandrayaan-3 mission consisted of a lunar lander, named Vikram, and a rover called Pragyan. Shortly after Vikram landed on the Moon – making India only the fourth nation to achieve such a feat – Pragyan rolled out on to the surface to start its task. The rover will study the south pole, searching for signs of water that could one day support a human base on the Moon. Just over a week later, on 2 September, India launched its first mission to the Sun. Aditya-L1 will orbit the Sun, carrying out studies.