Houston Mayor Turner: 'Congrats to India for becoming the fourth nation to land on the moon'

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner praised India after it successfully sent a spacecraft to the moon. The South Asian nation’s Chandrayaan-3 rover made its way onto the moon’s surface on Aug. 23, sending the country of 1.4 billion people into jubilation.

"Congrats to India for becoming the fourth nation to land on the moon and for the first successful landing on the South Pole of the moon,” Turner said in a tweet on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “A proud moment for [Prime Minister] Narendra Modi, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), and everyone who worked on Chandrayaan-3."

The mayor, who is in his final months in the city’s highest office, also tagged the Consulate General of India in Houston and the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Houston in his post. The X account for the consulate general, in turn, thanked Turner.

Reuters reported that India’s feat occurred a few days after Russia’s unsuccessful Luna-25 mission and served as redemption for the country’s own failed attempt in 2019. It’s purportedly known as India’s biggest scientific feat, with ISRO head S Somanath saying the experiments on the surface have yet to begin, Reuters said. The mission's name is derived from the Hindi and Sanskrit terms for “moon vehicle.”

CNBC reported that Modi hailed the landing as something that “belongs to all of humanity. All the people of the world, the people of every country and region: India’s successful moon mission is not just India’s alone… We can all aspire for the moon and beyond,” Modi said during the ISRO’s webcast of the milestone, per CNBC. The feat adds India to a list that includes the U.S., China, and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) and raises the former’s profile in space exploration.