ET BureauThis week's "Poke Me", invites your comments on 'Three Reasons Why (Especially) a Country Like India Needs its Mars Mission'. The feature will be reproduced on the edit page of the Saturday edition of the newspaper with a pick of readers' best comments.
So be poked and fire in your comments to us right away. Comments reproduced in the paper will be the ones that support or oppose the views expressed here intelligently. Feel free to add reference links etc, in support of your comments.
By Prakash Chandra
If all goes well, India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) will swing into orbit around the Red Planet next Wednesday on September 24. Launched in November 2013, the refrigerator-sized MOM has completed its nine-month, 666 million km-long heliocentric journey to Mars and is all set for its celestial waltz with the planet. MOM’s express mission: to read Martian biochemistry and hunt for tell-tale signs of methane, a key marker for the presence of some form of life on Mars.
But the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) scientists at mission control have their fingers crossed as the next step involves a tricky manoeuvre: firing the spacecraft’s engine -- after 300 days of disuse. The engine was last used to catapult MOM Marswards from Earth’s orbit in December 2013. The mission depends on the hibernating Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) springing to life to nudge the spacecraft into Mars orbit. Indian space engineering will be tested to its limits as MOM can only have one shot at orbital insertion. The slightest error could push the probe past Mars, with no chance of going back. In the unlikely event the LAM fails, eight smaller thrusters on MOM could still push the spacecraft into a different Martian orbit and salvage the mission.
Achieving Mars orbit would be an amazing accomplishment for Isro, considering more than half of the 44 Mars missions launched by other space agencies — including China and Japan -- have failed. Only the US, the former Soviet Union and Europe have successfully sent Mars missions so far.
But Isro’s signal achievement seems to be lost on critics who ask why India, which can hardly feed, clothe or house most of its citizens, should embark on space missions. Such concerns are misplaced for three reasons:
1. The notion that space endeavours like MOM take away from a fixed quantity of wealth in the country which, goes the argument, would otherwise have gone to the poor is misplaced. You don’t need an Amartya Sen to tell you that actually, the converse is true: commercial applications derived from space technologies produce the economic activity to augment the country’s prosperity.
The spin-offs of space exploration are all too obvious for a country like India where space technology dictates every aspect of its development. The same science that launches satellites also helps Indians in such areas as medicine, telecommunications, farming, mining, fishing and forestry. Satellite imagery from Indian remote sensing satellites is an invaluable tool for the farmer to determine weather and harvest data. Just as they indicate the best catch to the fisherman.
And if mitigating natural disasters (using satellite-based flood and cyclone warning systems) is not among a nation’s priority, what is? So space research is among the best wealth creation efforts. It is up to governments to decide whether and how to distribute this wealth.
2. Failure to master space amounts to being second best in everything, no matter how well a country develops its technological capability. Isro learnt this the hard way when in the 90s it lost precious years dragging its feet on developing cryogenic engine technology denied to it by western powers. As a result, the GSLV – the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, India’s most powerful booster rocket — is still in its developmental stage.
It’s not just the question of possessing enough resources that defines a country’s space effort. It’s equally got to do with the motivation of its people and the economics they would believe in. Nasa proved this spectacularly in the 60s when most people had never dreamt of moon trips happening in their lifetimes, let alone the prospect of themselves making the trip.
3. India’s Mars mission is not about competing with space exploration programmes of other countries. Indeed, New Delhi has cooperative agreements with 33 countries for the peaceful use of outer space in deep space navigation and communication support for space missions, joint realisation of earth observation satellites with advanced scientific instruments, capacity building and disaster management support. A successful MOM, showcasing Isro’s remarkable technological capability and frugal engineering, would be a compelling invitation to the world for investment. At Rs 450 crore ($72 million), MOM’s price tag is just a tenth of what Nasa spends on similar programmes. The real challenge today is to compete in the global space industry (worth over $350 billion in government budgets and commercial revenue) where Isro has yet to realise its true potential in the satellite launch market. Isro’s current revenues from this huge market are, at best modest, as it competes with big players who dominate with their heavy launchers.
It isn’t so much the idea of orbiting the tricolour around Mars as having such a capability to compete in the hi-tech global market that defines Isro’s Mars vision. Isro’s space exploration plans can hardly be labelled ‘Cathedral science’ -- huge projects that are more inspirational than useful -- and it is important these plans are not sunk under the weight of bells and whistles critics attach to them by quoting the economic, food and energy problems facing the world. For at the end of the day, any space programme will pay for itself many times over just by the scientific perspective it provides.
So be poked and fire in your comments to us right away. Comments reproduced in the paper will be the ones that support or oppose the views expressed here intelligently. Feel free to add reference links etc, in support of your comments.
By Prakash Chandra
If all goes well, India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) will swing into orbit around the Red Planet next Wednesday on September 24. Launched in November 2013, the refrigerator-sized MOM has completed its nine-month, 666 million km-long heliocentric journey to Mars and is all set for its celestial waltz with the planet. MOM’s express mission: to read Martian biochemistry and hunt for tell-tale signs of methane, a key marker for the presence of some form of life on Mars.
But the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) scientists at mission control have their fingers crossed as the next step involves a tricky manoeuvre: firing the spacecraft’s engine -- after 300 days of disuse. The engine was last used to catapult MOM Marswards from Earth’s orbit in December 2013. The mission depends on the hibernating Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) springing to life to nudge the spacecraft into Mars orbit. Indian space engineering will be tested to its limits as MOM can only have one shot at orbital insertion. The slightest error could push the probe past Mars, with no chance of going back. In the unlikely event the LAM fails, eight smaller thrusters on MOM could still push the spacecraft into a different Martian orbit and salvage the mission.
Achieving Mars orbit would be an amazing accomplishment for Isro, considering more than half of the 44 Mars missions launched by other space agencies — including China and Japan -- have failed. Only the US, the former Soviet Union and Europe have successfully sent Mars missions so far.
But Isro’s signal achievement seems to be lost on critics who ask why India, which can hardly feed, clothe or house most of its citizens, should embark on space missions. Such concerns are misplaced for three reasons:
1. The notion that space endeavours like MOM take away from a fixed quantity of wealth in the country which, goes the argument, would otherwise have gone to the poor is misplaced. You don’t need an Amartya Sen to tell you that actually, the converse is true: commercial applications derived from space technologies produce the economic activity to augment the country’s prosperity.
The spin-offs of space exploration are all too obvious for a country like India where space technology dictates every aspect of its development. The same science that launches satellites also helps Indians in such areas as medicine, telecommunications, farming, mining, fishing and forestry. Satellite imagery from Indian remote sensing satellites is an invaluable tool for the farmer to determine weather and harvest data. Just as they indicate the best catch to the fisherman.
And if mitigating natural disasters (using satellite-based flood and cyclone warning systems) is not among a nation’s priority, what is? So space research is among the best wealth creation efforts. It is up to governments to decide whether and how to distribute this wealth.
2. Failure to master space amounts to being second best in everything, no matter how well a country develops its technological capability. Isro learnt this the hard way when in the 90s it lost precious years dragging its feet on developing cryogenic engine technology denied to it by western powers. As a result, the GSLV – the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, India’s most powerful booster rocket — is still in its developmental stage.
It’s not just the question of possessing enough resources that defines a country’s space effort. It’s equally got to do with the motivation of its people and the economics they would believe in. Nasa proved this spectacularly in the 60s when most people had never dreamt of moon trips happening in their lifetimes, let alone the prospect of themselves making the trip.
3. India’s Mars mission is not about competing with space exploration programmes of other countries. Indeed, New Delhi has cooperative agreements with 33 countries for the peaceful use of outer space in deep space navigation and communication support for space missions, joint realisation of earth observation satellites with advanced scientific instruments, capacity building and disaster management support. A successful MOM, showcasing Isro’s remarkable technological capability and frugal engineering, would be a compelling invitation to the world for investment. At Rs 450 crore ($72 million), MOM’s price tag is just a tenth of what Nasa spends on similar programmes. The real challenge today is to compete in the global space industry (worth over $350 billion in government budgets and commercial revenue) where Isro has yet to realise its true potential in the satellite launch market. Isro’s current revenues from this huge market are, at best modest, as it competes with big players who dominate with their heavy launchers.
It isn’t so much the idea of orbiting the tricolour around Mars as having such a capability to compete in the hi-tech global market that defines Isro’s Mars vision. Isro’s space exploration plans can hardly be labelled ‘Cathedral science’ -- huge projects that are more inspirational than useful -- and it is important these plans are not sunk under the weight of bells and whistles critics attach to them by quoting the economic, food and energy problems facing the world. For at the end of the day, any space programme will pay for itself many times over just by the scientific perspective it provides.
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