PM Hasina writes to Modi congratulating moon landing

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina sent a message to her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi congratulating him and the people of India on the successful lunar landing of Chandrayaan-3 on Wednesday.

She conveyed her felicitations to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and its scientists for making India the fourth nation globally to land a spacecraft on the moon's surface, says a press release by foreign affairs ministry in Bangladesh.

Prime minister Hasina also conveyed that Bangladesh rejoices with India on this momentous occasion and on this historic achievement, which is a matter of immense pride and inspiration to all the South Asian countries in advancing the science and space technology sector.

Indian spacecraft landed on the moon on Wednesday, just days after a similar Russian lander crashed.

Chandrayaan means "moon vehicle" in Hindi and Sanskrit. In 2019, ISRO's Chandrayaan-2 mission successfully deployed an orbiter but its lander crashed.

The Chandrayaan-3 is expected to remain functional for two weeks, running a series of experiments including a spectrometer analysis of the mineral composition of the lunar surface.