Next night, the Indian Chandrayaan-2 mission will attempt to land on the moon after the United States, Russia and China.
The Indians will try to moon a robot tonight on the moon.
The rocket took off a month and a half ago, from the Bay of Bengal. So far a trouble-free trip, much quieter than a taxi ride to New Delhi. Stress is the arrival which is scheduled around 22 hours. The machine, a lander, must land between the craters Manzinus C and Simpelius N and a six-wheeled robot will begin to explore the South Pole.
The difficulty is that the lander sinks to 9000 km hour to the ground, it must stop or it will crash miserably like that of the Israelis in the spring.
If the mission succeeds, we will hear so far 1.3 billion Indians applaud. India will enter the very closed club of countries that have landed on the moon, with the United States, Russia and China. A dream of power will be satisfied. Glory to Narendra Modi, the nationalist prime minister.
In three years, he promises an inhabited flight, in ten years an orbital station.
The lunar robot is called Pragyan, it means Wisdom. He hopes to find traces of water. This will comfort the hundreds of millions of city dwellers in India who have water every other day and it is never drinkable.