Chandrayaan-3is the third mission in the Chandrayaan programme, a series of lunar-exploration missions developed by ISRO.The mission consists of Vikram, a lunar lander, and Pragyan, a lunar rover, as replacements for the equivalents on Chandrayaan-2, which had crashed on landing in 2019. The spacecraft was launched on July 14, 2023, at 14:35 IST from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota, India. It entered lunar orbit on 5 August, and touched down near the lunar south pole, at 69°S, on 23 August 2023 at 18:04 IST (12:33 UTC). With this landing, ISRO became the fourth national space agency to successfully land on the Moon, after the Soviet space program, NASA and CNSA, and the first national space agency to achieve a soft landing near the lunar south pole.[13] The lander was not built to withstand the cold temperatures of the lunar night, so it was shut down at sunset over the landing site, twelve days after landing. The orbiting propulsion module remained operational and was repurposed for scientific observations of Earth; it was shifted from lunar orbit to a high Earth orbit on 22 November 2023,[16] where it remains in service.
Tourism is one of the economic contributors to the union territory of Ladakh in Northern India. This union territory is located between the Karakoram mountain range to the north and the Himalayas to the south, and is situated at a height of 11,400 ft (3,475 km). Ladakh is composed of Leh and Kargil districts. The region contains prominent Buddhist sites and has an ecotourism industry.Ladakh was established as a union territory of India on 31 October 2019, following the passage of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act. Prior to that, it was part of the Jammu and Kashmir state.