Four days after Russia's ill-fated Luna-25 moon probe crash landed, India's heavily instrumented Chandrayaan-3 robotic lander dropped out of orbit for a rocket-powered descent to the lunar surface, successfully touching down near the moon's south pole.

The automated landing boosted India's increasingly sophisticated space program to the level of "space superpower," making it only the fourth nation, after the United States, China and the former Soviet Union, to land an operational spacecraft on the moon and the first to reach the south polar region.

Indian Chandrayaan-3 moon mission makes history after landing near lunar south polar region comes via ChinaTechNews.com.