India steps up space program with Mars mission

India is stepping up its space program with a higher budget, the launch of a new satellite and a proposed mission to Mars. The country’s space agency will attempt 10 space missions by November 2013, bringing its total budget to $ 1.3 billion. The 3,400-kg GSAT-10 communication satellite — the heaviest ever built by India — was launched recently aboard an Ariane-5 rocket. The satellite aims to be fully operational by November, and has a 15-year lifespan.
The GSAT-10 will boost telecommunications, direct-to-home and radio navigation services by adding 30 much-needed transponders to the country’s current capacity. India is currently leasing foreign transponders to meet domestic demand. In a recent press conference, Chairman of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Dr K. Radhakrishnan said that “India has unmatched skills in space technology and knowhow and it has plans to launch 10 missions in a year.”
“With the first launch a success, the ISRO faces a hectic schedule for the next year, with 9 more missions on the agenda,” said the ISRO chief. The most high-profile event is the launch of an orbiter to Mars, slated for November 2013, which aims to collect data on Martian methane sources. The ISRO timed the mission to coincide with a window where the planet’s orbit brings it closest to Earth.
India intends to complete the mission with no international assistance, as a means to demonstrate the growth of the ISRO. “At the moment, we plan to do it on our own,” ISRO chief K. Radhakrishnan said. After its successful unmanned Chandrayaan mission to the Moon in 2008, which brought back the first-ever clinching evidence of the presence of water there, India is now eyeing the Mars with firm plan and full conviction. The unmanned satellite, Mangalyaan, will study the thin Martian atmosphere and will take eight months to reach the distant planet.
The first model of the Mangalyaan was unveiled at the Indian Science Congress in the India’s eastern city of Kolkata recently. The mission will be launched from Sriharikota using the workhorse rocket, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). There is deep strategic importance to the mission. Former President APJ Abdul Kalam underlined the importance of the project by saying, “Mars is international property, all the planets belong to the international community.”
In fact, ISRO calls this small orbiting mission a technology demonstration project — the 1350 kilogram satellite will announce to the world that India has the capability to reach as far away as Mars. ISRO’s leading scientist, Professor J N Goswami, said: “The mission is getting on, and the engineering models are ready; the main Mars exploration instruments will be delivered by March-April and later they will be flown using the PSLV some time in October-November.”
Critics of the mission, however, believe the government is being profligate. “We have heard these arguments since the 1960s about India being a poor country, not needing or affording a space program. If we can’t dare dream big it would leave us as hewers of wood and drawers of water! India is today too big to be just living on the fringes of high technology,” said an ISRO scientist in a report published recently. The government says the satellite which will be placed in an orbit around Mars will be able to carry nearly 25 kg of scientific payload on board.
According to ISRO, the tentative objectives of the mission will be to focus on remotely assessing “life, climate, geology, origin and evolution and sustainability of life on the planet.” This is technology demonstration project, a mission that will announce to the world that India has the capability to reach as far away as Mars, the scientist added. Since 1960, there have been 44 missions to Mars with just about half of them being successful despite attempts made by mighty nations and blocs like the former USSR and Russia, the US, Europe, Japan and China.
The first Chinese mission to Mars called Yinghuo-1 failed in 2011 alongside the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission with which it was launched. Some believe that India is trying to march ahead in what has been described as the “Asian Space Race,” but this is not the case. In fact, India also has the ambitious goal of sending a manned mission to space by 2016, which will be a huge step for the country, but may also prove difficult to implement in the limited timeframe.
India has four years left, which is not a long time. However, the country has the chance to adapt what has already been developed by Russia, China and US. It is important to note that the ISRO has grown into one of the world’s top six space programs since its inauguration. “The first 50 missions took 27 years, the next 50 took place in the last 10 years and the next 58 missions will happen in the next five years,” Radhakrishnan said, in a report published recently.
Though its budget is less than one-tenth that of NASA’s, ISRO has increased every year since the early 2000s, jumping from $ 591 million in 2004-05, to $ 1.3 billion in 2012-13. However, India’s space ambitions have been met with a mixed response among the domestic population. The mission to Mars drew some criticism for its high costs in the midst of an economic downturn, but the plan has got the green light. This has encouraged the India’s science community to further boost their efforts.
“In fact, India is a country which works on different levels,” Krishan Lal, President of the Indian National Science Academy, said in the same report. “On the one hand, we have a space mission, on the other a large number of bullock carts,” he said. “You can’t say, remove all the bullock carts and cycles, then move into space … you have to move forward in all directions,” Lal added. The Indian space program began in 1962. In 1969, the ISRO was set up with headquarters in the Indian city of Bangalore for the purpose of rapid development in space technology and its application.
In 1972, the space commission was established. In 1975, India launched its first satellite, Aryabhatta, and thus entered the space age. Over the last two and half decades, the Indian space program has made impressive progress through a well integrated, self-reliant program. Its main objectives include mass communication and education via satellite, survey and management of natural resources through remote sensing technology, environmental monitoring and meteorological forecasting and development of indigenous satellites and satellite launch vehicles.
It is important to note here that India’s space program celebrated the historic milestone in September last year after successfully launching its 100th space mission. The ISRO put a French satellite and Japanese micro-satellite into polar orbit aboard its PSLV. The mission’s payload included SPOT 6, an observation satellite from France’s space agency (CNES), and Proiteres, a 15-kg microsatellite built by students and faculty at Japan’s Osaka Institute of Technology (OIT).
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an early proponent of India’s space program, witnessed the launch and congratulated ISRO scientists and engineers as well as personnel from France and Japan for the successful launch of their satellites.