The Vikram lander of India's successful moon mission, Chandrayaan-3, underwent a hop test when it made a soft-landing again on the lunar surface.

On being commanded, the lander fired the engines, elevated itself by about 40cm as expected and landed safely at a distance of 30 to 40cm away, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said in an update on 'X', formerly Twitter.

Pointing out that the lander exceeded its mission objectives, ISRO said the importance of the exercise was that this 'kick-start' enthuses future sample return and human missions to the moon, our New Delhi correspondent reports.

The space agency said, "All systems performed nominally and are healthy. Deployed (instruments) Ramp, ChaSTE and ILSA were folded back and redeployed successfully after the experiment."

India made history by soft-landing the Vikram lander of Chandrayaan-3 on the lunar surface for the first time on August 23, becoming the fourth country to touch the lunar surface and first to ever reach the south pole of the moon.