Tesla visionary leader and the world’s richest man Elon Musk reflected on India’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission, hours before its anticipated launch to the Moon. Responding to a post on social platform X (formerly Twitter) that highlighted the cost of the mission relative to the budget of the acclaimed film Interstellar, Musk praised the effort and described it as “beneficial for India”.
According to Ex Post, India’s lunar mission was executed with a budget of $75 million, which is much less than the $165 million invested in the making of Matthew McConaughey’s cinematic masterpiece Interstellar. Musk’s support for the Chandrayaan-3 mission underscores its importance in India’s growing space exploration programme.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission, primarily comprising the Vikram lander, is set to play a key role in India’s lunar exploration efforts, scheduled to land on the lunar surface on Wednesday evening.
A Reuters report on the day of the launch claimed that the budget of Chandrayaan-3 was $75 million, which is roughly equivalent to Rs 615 crore in Indian currency. More details were provided by the ANI report, which revealed that the approved cost of Chandrayaan-3 was Rs 250 crore, not including the launch vehicle expenditure. Conversion from dollar to rupee showed that the cost of the Interstellar project was around Rs 1,200 crore.
Chandrayaan-3 is the eagerly awaited third lunar exploration mission of ISRO after the groundbreaking Chandrayaan-2 project that attracted global attention for its extraordinary contribution to space exploration. With its imminent launch, the mission aspires to enhance our understanding of the lunar terrain and its complex aspects.
As stated by ISRO, the mission consists of three primary goals: to perform a safe and soft lunar surface landing, to demonstrate the rover’s maneuverability in lunar terrain, and to conduct in-situ scientific experiments.