Global reaction to Chandrayaan-3

 While India last week emerged as a potential global leader in space technology after Chandrayaan-3 made an amazingly successful landing on the moon, it is significant for the citizens of this country to take note of how the world community has reacted to this. While India has become only the fourth country to land a probe on the moon after the United States, Russia, and China, what is most significant is that India has become the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole. First and foremost, look at what NASA has said. One of the pioneers in space exploration, the US space agency has expressed its admiration for India’s moon mission by congratulating ISRO on the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the moon’s south pole. NASA’s reaction further emphasised the significance of this achievement for India’s space programme. On the other hand, the US Department of State’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs said the success of Chandrayaan-3 will power the “imagination and light the future of people around the world. Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, has called India’s moon landing an “impressive” achievement. It should be noted that India and Russia were in a ‘space race’ of sorts recently until Moscow’s first moon mission in 45 years, Luna-25, crashed on August 19. Despite that, the Kremlin’s official statement described India’s achievement as a big step forward in space exploration and a testament to the impressive progress made by India in the field of science and technology. China’s reaction, however, is said to be “the most muted, with reports saying Beijing’s mouthpiece CGTN had just made a formal statement that India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft had made a soft landing on the moon. That the West is not amused with India’s success can be gauged from a BBC question saying, “Should India, which lacks infrastructure and has extreme poverty, be spending this much money on a space program?” Way back in 2014, The New York Times had to apologize after it published an offensive cartoon mocking the success of India’s first Mars mission, implying that the other countries were part of an elite club and India was a misfit there. This shows how some forces are not happy with India’s success.