Everybody across the world has been wanting to go to the moon and explore and experiment with the length and breadth of it.

But do you know India once upon a time India intentionally crashed its spacecraft on the moon?

India launched the Chandrayaan mission on October 22, 2008, as it announced to the world its capabilities of sending missions outside Earth's orbit, on another celestial body. Till then, just four other countries had managed to send a mission to the lunar world - the US, Russia, Europe, and Japan. India became the fifth.

The Chandrayaan programme also known as the Indian Lunar Exploration Programme is an ongoing series of outer space missions by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for the exploration of the Moon. The programme incorporates lunar orbiter, impactor, soft lander and rover spacecraft.

While Chandrayaan was a technology demonstration mission, what it did around the Moon is known to the world. Yes, it found water on the surface of the Moon and registered its name in history books. But, there was more to this mission than meets the eye.

Hidden inside the spacecraft was a 32-kilogram probe, whose sole purpose was to crash. They called it the Moon Impact Probe.

Back to the night of November 17, 2008. Sometime around 8:06 pm, the engineers sitting in the mission control of Isro keyed the commands that jettisoned the Moon Impact Probe. The silent world of the Moon was about to feel the bang.

From an altitude of 100 kilometers above the lunar surface, the impact probe commenced its final journey.

As the probe began to step away from the Chandrayaan orbiter, its onboard spin-up rockets came to life and began guiding its plunge to the Moon.

These engines roared, not to speed it up, but to slow it down, and re-orient it for a pitch-perfect crash. As the spacecraft travelled through the airless world of the Moon, it started seeing what lay below - a bruised, battered world that was about to have one more crater on its face.