India becomes the first country to land near the Moon's south pole

India's Chandrayaan-3 mission has successfully landed its Vikram module near the south pole of the Moon. India became the fourth country to make a soft landing on the Moon, after the USSR, the US and China, and the first in this region.

Millions of people watched the broadcast of the landing. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was at the BRICS summit in South Africa, called it historic.

The Pragyan rover is to spend one lunar day, about 14 Earth days, studying the composition of the soil and searching for traces of water ice.

India's success came a few days after the failure of Russia's Luna-25 in the same region.