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TechTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:02 Just a few days ago, on 23rd of August,
00:14 the Chandrayaan-3 project landed its lander unit and rover
00:18 on the south pole of the moon.
00:20 With that, India became the fourth country
00:22 to land on the moon.
00:24 And it's been a matter of great pride for us.
00:26 While we have all been rejoicing,
00:28 one question comes up, why is it so difficult
00:32 to land on the moon?
00:34 And why was nobody else trying to go to the south pole?
00:36 The fact is, everyone was trying to go to the south pole.
00:39 It's actually quite exciting to go to the south pole.
00:42 For about 5, 10 years, we have known
00:44 that there is the possibility of ice water
00:47 on the south pole of the moon.
00:49 While I'm sure that that water is extremely frozen,
00:52 just this possibility of having water on the moon
00:55 makes it so much more exciting to go right
00:57 next to the water part.
00:59 So you might ask, why was it so difficult to land
01:03 on the moon's south pole?
01:04 [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
01:06 Three fundamental reasons.
01:08 Number one, lack of communication.
01:10 Number two, no way to slow down.
01:12 And number three, no ability to know what you'll find there.
01:16 Let me go one by one.
01:17 Number one, why is it difficult to know
01:20 what's happening on the south side of the moon?
01:21 Why is it difficult to communicate there?
01:23 One, the polarity and the gravitational effects,
01:27 plus the fact that it is always away from the sun,
01:31 makes it extremely difficult to get any signals in and out
01:35 of that part of the moon.
01:36 Number two, anywhere on the moon, if you're trying to land,
01:38 there is no atmosphere, therefore,
01:41 no air to slow you down.
01:43 The only way to slow yourself down is to use thrusters.
01:47 And number three, the absence of any knowledge
01:49 of how high or low are you going to land.
01:52 From this distance, the moon looks currida, undulating.
01:56 But it is not just a small amount.
01:59 There are five, five kilometer deep trenches and mountains
02:03 the height of Mount Everest up there.
02:05 Where exactly are you going to land
02:07 could be off by tens of kilometers.
02:09 When you don't know how to communicate with a lander that
02:11 is landing by itself, and it doesn't
02:13 know how deep does it have to go before it actually
02:17 slows down to zero speed, there is a chance
02:20 that you will make a mistake.
02:22 Like we did last time.
02:23 But thankfully, this time we did not.
02:24 We landed safely.
02:26 And we are out there doing tons of experiments
02:29 and scientific stuff to know more
02:32 about our solar system, our galaxy, and all things
02:36 that make up the universe.
02:37 Let me tell you about three or four core things
02:40 we are trying to find out and how can that help humanity.
02:43 So what do we want to find out about our solar system
02:47 and our galaxy?
02:49 Well, the good thing about the dark side of the moon
02:52 and the South Pole is there are deep craters where ice has been
02:56 there for billions of years.
02:58 Sunlight has never reached there.
03:00 So the ice has never, ever melted,
03:03 which basically means it has information
03:05 from billions of years ago.
03:07 And finding those cores and analyzing them
03:10 can give us unique information that no telescope can ever
03:14 find.
03:14 But what do we want to do with all of this?
03:16 Well, ideally, if we want to have a space station
03:19 on the moon, some people would want to buy tickets
03:21 and go there.
03:21 But I think way before that, we just
03:23 want to do space exploration from the moon.
03:25 And we want to know, can we build something safe there?
03:29 Is the crust of the moon safe enough to build?
03:32 Is there any seismic activity?
03:34 We want to know, is there enough water to be used as fuel?
03:40 Because water is hydrogen and oxygen. If you split it up,
03:42 you can create fuel.
03:43 We also want to know, are there other ions, like potassium,
03:47 sodium, lithium, available?
03:50 Some of them that would be necessary to build
03:52 on the moon.
03:53 Some of them might be really valuable chemicals
03:55 and minerals to bring back to Earth.
03:57 We also want to know, from a very, very cheap spacecraft
04:01 called the moon, can we see other far away exoplanets
04:06 and asteroids without having to build
04:08 a space station of our own?
04:10 These are the main things ISRO is trying to do.
04:13 Of course, it's also trying to do spectrometry
04:15 and understand geography of the moon
04:18 and do all of those things, for which there
04:20 are seven scientific modules out there.
04:23 And some of them have very, very complex names,
04:26 but very nice, small, little names like Rambha, Chaste,
04:31 Ilsa.
04:31 I really like the guys at ISRO.
04:33 They have made those names so much fun,
04:35 because it was so difficult for us to read,
04:37 like, for example, radio anatomy
04:38 of moon-bound hypersensitive ionosphere and atmosphere.
04:41 Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer,
04:44 laser-induced breakdown spectroscope.
04:46 These are complex, right?
04:47 Rambha, Ilsa, Chaste.
04:50 Easy names, very, very big scientific task.
04:53 Way to go, ISRO and Chandrayaan-3.
04:56 We look forward to all the science.
04:59 [MUSIC PLAYING]
05:03 [MUSIC PLAYING]
05:06 (upbeat music)