The ecstasy on the campus was a blend of a much-awaited relief and the sheer joy of witnessing the Chandrayaan-3 soft land on the dark side of the moon in only the second attempt after the previous unsuccessful bid hardly four years ago.

It was a different kind of emotion for the employees of the Isro Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in the Peenya Industrial Area of the city where the team led by Isro chairman S. Somanath was glued to the screens that displayed the telemetry and health of the craft as the final countdown began.

While most scientists stayed away from the media centre during the descent, unlike the Chandrayaan-2 attempt in September 2019, a good number of non-technical staff had gathered along with a few young engineers who were holding their breath as the Vikram lander neared the surface of the moon.

They broke into loud cheers and celebrations seconds before the actual soft landing upon realising there was only one way the lander was going, and that was to land on the dark side of the moon where no craft had gone before.

Chants of “Bharat Mata ki jai” rose as the giant screen on which the telemetry was being displayed showed that Vikram, with the Pragyaan rover in its belly, had landed safely and was apparently healthy for the next phase of the mission.

Minutes later a beaming Somanath walked into the media centre along with some of the key members of the Chandrayaan-3 team that made it possible for the nation to break into celebration mode.

“We had a very soft landing and actually achieved most of the conditions for landing, including the velocity at touchdown,” he said, putting the end-stage velocity at “less than two metres per second”.

“The health of the craft will be very good and we will be able to continue our work. We are looking at a very exciting 14 days from now,” he said, alluding to the life of the craft that is one-moon-day, which translates to 14 days on Earth.

Amid the celebrations by the ISTRAC staff, Somanath pointed out that the failure of Chandrayaan-2 had in fact helped the team learn. “The unsuccessful landing of Chandrayaan-2 has really helped us in perfecting the methodology,” he said, thanking the thousands of engineers, scientists and retired heads of missions and former chairpersons for making it possible this time.

“They have gone through such an agony of understanding what went wrong (with the previous mission) and spent almost a year looking at data (from Chandrayaan-2). I don’t think they would have slept very well in the last so many years,” Somanath said, thanking the Chandrayaan-2 team and their contributions to increasing the number of redundancies that ensured the success of the current mission.

Somanath skipped a question on how cost-effective the mission would be, saying: “If I explain all the secrets, others will learn and they will become equally cost-effective.”

V. Narayanan, director of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre of Isro, later told The Telegraph that Vikram had landed “at the pre-destined spot without difficulty”.

To a question whether the on-board computers on the lander made any last-minute course correction on sighting any non-conducive terrain, he said: “Everything went as planned.”

The engines that provided reverse thrust to slow down the landing also went according to plan. “Initially, all four engines were fired and later only two engines fired while soft-landing,” he said.

“It (the landing) was as planned and there was no glitch,” Narayanan added.