Shiv Shakti Point is the official name for the extraterrestrial landing site of the Chandrayaan-3 mission's Vikram lander on the Moon. It is a geographical concept, specifically a designated point on the lunar surface, located near the Moon's South Pole at coordinates 69.373°S, 32.319°E. The point was created when the lander successfully achieved a soft landing on August 23, 2023, making India the first country to land near the lunar South Pole. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the name on August 26, 2023, at the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru. The name, derived from Indian philosophy, is a compound word depicting the masculine ("Shiva") and feminine ("Shakti") duality of nature. The "Shakti" component was specifically noted as a tribute to the women scientists involved in the mission. The name was formally approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature on March 19, 2024, and is officially listed as Statio Shiv Shakti. The landing site is geologically significant, estimated to be over 3.7 billion years old. Scientific analysis of the soil at Shiv Shakti Point, conducted by the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) on the Pragyan rover, revealed a chemical composition closely resembling the lunar meteorite ALHA 81005, which was discovered in Antarctica in 1982. This finding suggests the soil is a mixture of materials from different layers of the Moon's crust, including fragments enriched in iron and magnesium from deeper layers. The concept connects to Tiranga Point, the name given to the site where the Chandrayaan-2 lander crashed in 2019.
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