India’s moon landing made history at a low cost

The list is grim reading: Stuck, failed, missed, failed, failed, stuck, failed, crashed, missed, crashed, crashed.

Those were the fate of the Soviet Union’s first 11 attempts before successfully landing a spacecraft on the moon, according to a database compiled by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who catalogs space missions.

Even in the modern era — with nine lunar landing attempts since 2013 — the track record is still shaky. Before India’s success Wednesday, missions by China, India, Israel, Japan and Russia were three for eight in the past decade.

McDowell’s database showcases the monumental challenge undertaken by the 50 attempts to land on the moon, with a cheeky scoreboard that reads: Earthlings 23, Gravity 27.

India chocked up its first W against Gravity on Wednesday, after the country’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft safely landed on the lunar surface. The feat makes India the fourth country to successfully land on the moon, and the first to touch down near the lunar south pole.

“They should feel very proud of this accomplishment,” Jim Bridenstine, who led NASA as administrator from 2018 to 2021, told CNBC.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of India’s moon landing is the shoestring budget — by government standards — with which the country achieved the mission. In 2020, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) estimated the Chandrayaan-3 mission would cost about $75 million. The launch was delayed two years, which likely increased the overall mission’s cost. ISRO has not responded to CNBC’s request for an updated cost figure.

But that rivals the…