India first to land spacecraft on moon’s south pole

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India made history Wednesday by becoming the first country to reach the lunar south pole.

An uncrewed robotic moon lander, operated by India’s space agency and known as the Chandrayaan-3, touched down on the moon’s south polar region around 8:34 a.m. ET Wednesday.

The Indian Space Research Organization’s successful touchdown comes just days after a Russian spacecraft that was en route to the same area failed during an orbital maneuver and crashed into the lunar surface. The failure was a major setback for Russia’s space agency, known as Roscosmos.

The Chandrayaan-3 landing, however, is a huge boon for the world's most populous nation, which has been vying for greater influence in the cosmos, through both the government’s space agency and private investment. Only three other countries in history have pulled off controlled, or “soft,” lunar landings: the United States, China and the former Soviet Union.

The moon’s south pole has long been of interest to space agencies and scientists because the region’s shadowed craters are thought to hold greater concentrations of water ice than elsewhere on the lunar surface, so it could be of critical importance for establishing long-term human settlements on the moon.

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