India readied Wednesday to become the first nation to land a spacecraft on the Moon's south pole, days after a Russian probe crashed in the same region.

The latest attempted Moon landing is a historic moment for the world's most populous nation, as it rapidly closes in on milestones set by global space powers.

Chandrayaan-3, which means "Mooncraft" in Sanskrit, is scheduled to touch down shortly after 6:00 pm India time (1230 GMT) near the little-explored lunar south pole.

"India reaches for the Moon", The Times of India front-page headline read Wednesday, with the hoped-for lunar landing dominating local news. "It's D-Day for Moon Mission", The Hindustan Times said.

A previous Indian effort failed in 2019, and the latest attempt comes just days after Russia's first Moon mission in almost 50 years, destined for the same region, crashed on the lunar surface.

Aotearoa New Zealand is the latest country to enter the expanding and competitive international space market.

In the aerospace strategy and national space policy, the government lays out how it intends to grow the domestic space sector by launching rockets and satellites and promoting Earth observation research.

The documents indicate the government's general priorities in "protecting New Zealand's national interests" and the "responsible use of space".

Sustainability is a focus in both strategy and policy but is used interchangeably in three different contexts:

• To "sustain" the economic development of the industry
• to describe the benefits of aerospace technology for sustainability efforts, like monitoring climate change
• to describe the environmental impacts of aerospace activities, largely focused on space debris, while reducing emissions (though the latter is largely a concern for the aviation industry, not space).

When a part from India's recent rocket launch landed on Australian shores last month, it captured people's attention—and delivered a reminder that Earth's orbits are teeming with the discards of human endeavors in space.