Vietnamese State President Vo Van Thuong on Thursday sent a letter of congratulations to his Indian counterpart Droupadi Murmu on the successful lunar landing of India's Chandrayaan-3, according to the Vietnamese foreign ministry.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh also cabled a congratulatory message to Indian PM Narendra Modi while National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue did the same to Chairman of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of India’s parliament) Jagdeep Dhankhar and Speaker of the Lok Sabha (the lower house) Om Birla.

Vietnam’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son sent his congratulations to Indian Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft successfully made a lunar landing near the south pole of the moon on Wednesday after using India’s LVM3 rocket to launch from the Satish Dhawan National Space Center in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh on July 14.

The successful mission landed India amongst the four countries to have safely landed a spacecraft on the moon. The other three include the U.S., China, and the former Soviet Union.

The South Asian country has also been credited as the first country to smoothly land a spacecraft on the south pole of the moon.

"Chandrayaan-3 rover: Made in India. Made for the Moon. The Ch-3 rover ramped down from the lander and India took a walk on the moon,” the Times of India cited ISRO as stating on X, formerly Twitter.

This lunar landing is the most significant scientific milestone in Indian history, the newspaper commented in an editorial.

“It is a matter of pride and a pat on the back for Indian scientists,” PM Modi was quoted by Reuters as saying at the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Thursday.

The Indian government chief also said on X that this achievement is not just India’s pride but “a beacon of human endeavor and perseverance.” 

Hours after the landing, the Pragyan rover, part of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, rolled out of the spacecraft’s Vikram lander to begin its lunar exploration, S. Somanath, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), reported on Thursday.

The rover is expected to operate for two weeks, during which time it will run on solar energy, according to ISRO.  

Somanath said both the lander and rover were in good condition, and both “work very well.”

ISRO will, for the first time, face 'many issues' on the moon’s surface, especially lunar dust and temperatures that could affect moving parts, Somanath said.

“The mechanisms, the moving items... can get entangled with the dust there. It can get into the moving parts and jam them, the bearings of the system may not work, the motors may not work,” CNN News 18 TV channel cited Somanath.

Lunar dust is different from that on the earth’s surface and due to the lack of oxygen is likely to impact the rover’s operation, he added.

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