ISRO has ben awarded the 2023 Leif Erikson Lunar Prize by the Exploration Museum in Iceland’s Husavik for its successful Chandrayaan-3 mission.
Key points
- The award celebrates the first soft-landing of a spacecraft near the lunar south pole and ISRO’s indomitable spirit in advancing lunar exploration and contributing to understanding celestial mysteries.
- The Leif Erikson Award is an annual prize given by the Exploration Museum since 2015.
- The award is named after Leif Erikson — a Norse explorer thought to be the first European to set foot on continental America, almost four centuries before the expedition of Christopher Columbus.
- Chandrayaan-3 was India’s third mission to the moon, and the first mission touch down the moon.
- ISRO managed to place the Vikram lander on the lunar surface and roll out the robotic rover, Pragyaan.
