Sky always been a fascinating and curiousness for mankind from the stone age to till date. Human continuously making efforts to solve mysteries of glittery objects.
In earlier days we had been believing that the model of universe was, our earth was stationary and all the other objects in the sky, the sun, the moon, planets and stars were moving in circular orbits about the earth. From that model of our universe to today’s model is totally different, we gradually and thoroughly gathered knowledge and now, we know even our solar system travels around the center of our galaxy. The solar system moves about 60-degree angle between the galactic plane and the planetary orbital plane. It takes around 230 to 250 million years to make a full orbit of around the center of galaxy. And our cosmic home Milky Way galaxy is one of those two trillion galaxies present in the observable universe.
We see the biggest extraterrestrial object in our sky is the moon, the most attractive and shining object. The moon is always been in our poems and songs as a symbol of love. Now, the moon is not only attracting our poets and lyricists, even our scientists find interesting for their space mission. Till the time writing of this article total 140 moon missions, we did so far. Out of which 9 was human mission. Astronaut Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans walked on the lunar surface, when Apollo 11 of USA landed successfully on 20th July 1969. Before that Luna-2 of Soviet Union launched on September 12th 1959 was the first man made object to impact the moon. China’s Chang’e program has been successful in several moon mission.
How longer India could be behind in space research development. The Chandrayan Programme also known as the Indian Lunar Exploration Programme, in August 2003 Indian government had announced Chandrayan project that would cost around Rs. 350 cr. and would carry orbiter only. After visiting of then president A P J Abdul Kalam in ISRO, he had suggested orbiter alone would not be sufficient. Let’s embraced the moon completely, another instrument that could be dropped. The design of the project was changed and Moon Impact Probe (MIP) was included. It was planned to drop MIP from 100 km altitude and would acquire close range images and data of the surface and also measuring constituents of lunar atmosphere for future soft-landing mission.
Today the entire nation is celebrating the success of Chandrayaan-3 mission. The story of success was written on the base of all learnings and researches from the past both missions of Chandrayaan-1 and Chandrayaan-2. Especially from the failure of soft landing of the Chandrayaan-2. This time ISRO worked on the principle of mitigated all expected failures, whereas at the time of the Chandrayaan-2, they tried to land successfully on the lunar surface. They took every minute details on a serious note in every step, sensor failure, engine failure, algorithm failure and calculation failure. Moreover, loaded additional aid for making fully ensure for soft landing in the south pole of lunar. Instead of one orbital high-resolution camera they added two for the detail floor map of 28 cm resolution, instead of one they added 2 TTC antennas, for hovering another 60 minutes extra 250 kg fuel was loaded, additional solar panels all around the landing module, for accurate estimation of speed and distance added Doppler Velocity Monitor.
Chandrayan-3 had been moving inch by inch and fixing its foot prints of success in space for India. In everyday, we were getting news of the spacecraft. The feeling of proud was like as if our own son or daughter creating milestones in his or her career. 14th July 2023 Chandrayaan-3 successfully launched into orbit; on the following day 15th July the first orbit-raising maneuver was successfully performed. On 5th August Chandrayaan-3 successfully inserted into the lunar orbit. 16th August ISRO said the spacecraft successfully underwent a fifth and final lunar orbit, 153 km * 163 km. on 17th August ISRO announced that the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft’s lander module had successfully separated from the propulsion module. The module comprising the lander “Vikram” and the rover “Pragyan” were now ready to be lowered in orbit. On 18th August Vikram lander sent moon’s images. In an official post ISRO posted that a two-way communication between chandrayan-2 orbiter and chandrayan-3’s lander module had been established. They said now MOX (Mission Operations Complex) had more routes to reach LM (Lander Module). On a day before 22nd August, of final landing ISRO announced that they would take the final call on landing only after assessment of two hours before scheduled landing. The landing would have been postponed to 27th August if they found the lander module’s health parameters ‘abnormal’. Through the laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV) meter, they were closely monitoring the lunar surface. On that day Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams told to National Geographic India. “Landing on the moon will provide us with invaluable insights. I am truly thrilled that India is at the forefront of space exploration and the pursuit of sustainable living on the moon. These are truly exciting times.”
After a voyage of 41 days, after all the day had come when the India was going to create a history. Chandrayaan-3 India’s lunar mission generated interest globally after 20th August, Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the moon after it spun into an uncontrolled orbit. Everyone was a bundle of nerves as the time was coming closer and closer. Those 18 minutes of final phase of touching the lunar surface were full of intense anxiety, chanting prayers, crossing fingers, biting nails. In the last phase of soft landing of 18 minutes, the lander module propelled to moon’s surface as per intendent trajectory. In the rough breaking phase, the lander velocity brought down from 1680 m/sec. to 358 m/sec. and the altitude from 30 km to 7.4 km, all in the duration of 11.5 minutes. And then after had the rough breaking phase and attitude hold phase, it moved to the Fine braking phase, in this phase it brought down altitude further to 800 meters. The phase entirely driven and control by autonomous landing sequencer and there was no intervention from ground. And then finally, it approached towards the final stage of landing, moved to Vertical Descent phase.
As per local Indian time, 6:04 PM (IST), after prayers in temples, dargahs and gurudwaras, with tears in eyes of scientist, after travelled around 384400 kilometers with investment of Rs. 615 crores for overall project, finally the whole world saw us that we landed on the moon, in the south pole. India has become the first country to land in the south pole region of lunar.
On that day India’s Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi was in Johannesburg, South Africa to attend fifteenth BRIC summit, joined the event from online. Later on, he declared on the day of landing on the moon, 23rd August as a “National Space Day”, said India was now in front row of nations.
On the triumph day, few news were captured by news headlines other than the detailing of Chandrayaan-3 mission, which were interesting and may or may not corelated with the Chandrayaan-3 but, interesting to point out here. In Brics summit including India other country members advocated for expansion of Brics grouping to include other nations. And on the following day we had news that six countries Saudi Arabia, Iran, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia and UAE were decided to join the Brics. Now, Brics have six of the top nine crude oil producers and two largest economies of south America, Brazil and Argentina. On 23rd August we also noticed in the newspaper that Indian Rupee rose 25 paisa against US dollar, that was settled at 3-week high and Russian president Vladimir Putin attended the Brics summit through virtual. As he was alleged war crimes and wanted under international arrest. Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi had expressed India’s concerns on the ‘unsolved issues’ along with Line Of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh to Chinese President Xi Jinping during an interaction on the sideline of Brics summit.
During the entire mega episode and on the date of successfully landing of lander module of CH-3 in lunar south pole, this news could able to capture a very small space of newspaper without having any highlights and colours, just simply in a box sharing with other’s news block. But worthy to notice in a point of view of world’s space exploration or more specifically we can say from the eye of race for acclaiming super power in the space territory. During Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to South Africa, two agreements were signed on official cooperation between the two countries South Africa and China. One covers human spaceflight and the other involves the international lunar research station, a plan to build a base on the moon backed by China. It was the step to bolster and showing dominance position in the competition for lunar. On a day before of India’s success lunar mission receiving enormous accolades, Unexpectedly and unannounced absence of the Chinese President Xi Jinping from his speech at Brics business forum, his speech was delivered by Wang Wentao, Chinese Commerce Minister.
India’s road map for space is clearly seen, without giving any gap after the successful event of Chandrayaan-3, on dated 28th August 2023 ISRO announced that India’s first solar mission Aditya L1 would be launched 2nd September at 11:50 am. The motto of the mission is to study of the solar corona, solving how the temperature of the solar corona reach up to million degrees while the sun’s surface temperature remains at above 6000 degrees centigrade. And to study about the solar waves at L1. The L1 is Sun-Earth Lagrange Point, which is about 1.5 million kilometers from the earth, it is around four times more distance than lunar mission, but only 1% of total distance between The Sun and The Earth. It is the point in space where the gravitational forces of sun and earth produce enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion. It can be use by spacecraft to consume less fuel to remain in position. This mission was sanctioned around $46 million in 2019, however the actual cost as on the date wasn’t revealed.
The ISRO has already chalked out and declared about the mission of Earth’s twin planet, Venus. Unlike Mars orbital mission in 2014, a demonstration of technology to attract other nations’ space agencies on our capabilities for accomplishing space mission that to at the lowest cost, Shukrayaan-1, however, the name of the mission of Venus planet isn’t officially announced, will focus on doing more scientific observation and studies in Venus’s orbit from a 300 km high perch. ISRO has been working on Gaganyaan also, a human spacecraft mission.
Obviously, the question comes in our mind what it significantly means for India or an Indian after expending of so much. In FY 2023-24 the budget was allocated for space department Rs. 12,543.91 crores. India is the country spending 0.05% of its GDP, more than its peers, at least ten members of G20 nations, higher than UK, Canada and Australia. However, India has launched 103 spacecraft, more than European space agencies and developed nations like France. India has also launched 140 objects into outer space so far.
All these space missions show India steadily stepping forward on the road map of global space industry towards making its position as a “Vishwa Guru”. It was proven when ISRO launched 342 foreign satellites of 34 countries in June 2022. Antrix, it’s a commercial arm of ISRO, promotes and commercially markets the products and services of emanating from the Indian space programme, generated revenue of Rs. 6289 crores by launching 239 satellite from 2016 to 2019. Currently it’s estimated that the size of India’s space economy is $8 billion and it would go up to $45 billion in the next ten years. India’s share is only about 2% of global space economy which is overall $423 billion. However, it is expected that India would have chance to take around 10% by 2030 with the rate of CAGR of 40%.
Back-to-back after successful mission of Chandrayaan-3 and then launch of Aditya-L1, India could able to bring global investor’s attention to invest in India space sector. Several private players Larsen & Toubro (L&T), MTAR technologies and Ananth technologies played a pivotal role in these projects. L&T is planning for making a position in commercial satellite launch business and bid for the transfer of technology for Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV), which is capable to carry payload up to 500 kg to low orbit of the earth. The company has already bagged a Rs. 860 crore deal as an association with several companies including Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL) for end-to-end production of Polar Satellite Launch Vehicles (PSLVs).
India has some 146 space startups currently compared to only 21 in 2020. Data by IN-SPACe (The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre), is ISRO’s commercial arm. IN-SPACe invited EoI (Expression of Interest) in the July month of 2023, around 70 players have taken interest out of which 20 companies are the ongoing stage. Market also saluted to the shares of companies those were involved in supply critical modules and systems for the mission, touched a new high on the day we touched lunar’s south pole. Paras Defence & Space Technologies, which contributed navigation system share price high by 5.5%; MTAR Technologies was high by 4.8% and Midhani (Mishra Dhatu Nigam) was high by 3.9%.
Although it is true to say that the Indian space industry is in transformation phase, but it’s worthy to mention in between 2010 to 2019 the total funds raised was $35 million. Fund raising reached up to $96 million in 2021 and $112 million in 2022. It’s continuously on the upward trajectory, this year in 2023 up to July already funding was $62 million, shows a substantial growth of 60% compare to the same period of the last year. The top three companies on basis of fund raising are Pixxel $ 97.10 million, SkyRoot $72.3 million and Agnikul $34.8 million. On this mission of building a robust private ecosystem in the space industry, IN-SPACe is playing a vital role in guiding startups. Currently the Indian private players are acting as a vendor for ISRO. To change the mode from vendor to global space agency, IN-SPACe serves a facilitator to transfer technologies originates from ISRO.
To reshape this entire space industry and to explore it with full potential the government of India unleashed reforms in space domain in 2020, opened the door for NGEs (Non-Government Entities). The vision is to create an ecosystem and to encourage and develop a flourishing commercial presence in space. The ISpA, (Indian Space Association) is a non-profit industry body was formed to boost up start up. IPpA does to make ease of doing business and policy stability in space business, encourage and facilitate all space domain activities and to make understand formalities and how to go about contracts with ISRO to join hand. It’s providing policy advocacy platform on behalf of NGEs to the government and acting as a single window agency for stakeholders. Another commercial arm of ISRO, NSIL (NewSpace India limited) has been incorporated in 2019 under administrative control of DOS (Department of Space). It supports and focusing in domestic collaboration for launching vehicle, transfer technology and marketing. It’s making easier and strengthen country’s space economy. NSIL seeks to change ISRO’s approach to commercialization from “supply-based model” to “demand-based model”. Cheap labour and supportive regulations are giving edge to India in the aerospace industry in the world. Cost of similar missions are much lesser than the other countries. Successful mission of Chandrayaan-3 was with cost Rs. 615 crores and Russian Luna-25 which was unfortunately crashed a week prior, was cost roughly around Rs. 1600 crore. France and NASA are also engaging with our ISRO in various projects. Other developed countries are agreed to share technology for upcoming India’s Shukrayaan-1 mission.
The timing of Chandrayaan-3 was perfect and has been grasped by news-headlines of every news media. It was the time when several leaders of Brics countries were discussing on global issues and other developing countries were planned to admit in Brics. It was the time when trade ministers of G20 countries were discussing on various trades and investments issues at Jaipur, India. And after a couple of weeks later, global leaders of G20 nations attended the conference at New Delhi to discuss on political, economic, social, environmental and other issues. All these events created a set ground to narrate the success story of Indian space industry and this phenomenon opens the space industry for India in many folds, and when this sector will open in many folds then career opportunities would obviously come in many levels too.
Outer Space Treaty came into force in 1967 and as of August 2023, 114 countries are parties. Which is overseen by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affaires. This is clear that the outer space should be considered as province for all mankind, is free for exploration and that the moon and other celestial bodies can’t be claimed by any nation. Moreover, these are to be used purely for peaceful purposes only.
The moon is in our poems and songs and will be there always as it is. But the picture what we have been seeing since our childhood days, that may change. The advertisement campaign related to child’s future now may portrait more in space-oriented career by dressing up astronautical dress. Now to fulfill dreams to become scientist or connecting with space mission would be easy than earlier. Glittery objects in the sky will have been making us curious, this curiosity will lead to do more explorations of our space and this will open new and new doors of opportunities.
Globally space industry is growing up with rocket speed. The industry is mushrooming in India too. We can’t effort to lose the opportunity and that to when we are much capable to come in the front row. We believe it or not, but the matter of fact is, we are in the race and we have to be. We can say that India is moving towards in the new orbit.
