Cheers reverberated around the ISRO control room as the Chandrayaan 3 spacecraft successfully landed on the Moon on August 23. Just moments earlier, the room had been gripped by a tense silence, as scientists watched the Vikram lander's descent towards the lunar surface.
Watch was all they could do, as the craft's final journey was being controlled not manually by the scientists, but by an automatic landing system.
Metre-by-metre, as the Vikram lander made its way towards the Moon's surface, the tension rose, until finally, it was released in a massive roar of victory.
With the touchdown, India became the fourth nation to have conducted a soft-landing on the Moon. More importantly, India became the first country ever to put a craft near the Moon's south pole.