By Hari Bansh Jha
September 24, 2014 will be remembered as a day of pride for India in particular and the developing countries in general for the success achieved by the Indian space agency, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), in sending its spacecraft, Mangalayaan, into the orbit around the Mars in very first attempt.
This is a unique phenomenon as not even the Americans, Russians or the Europeans which had sent their missions into the Mars orbit in the past were able to do so. Of course, a single success is not a sufficient ground for future successes, it cannot be denied that this per se is a major achievement. Now that India became the fourth country to successfully launch the satellite to Mars, the ISRO was able to join the elite league of NASA, the European Space Agency and the erstwhile Soviet Union.
The Mangalyaan, formally referred to as Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) was launched from the Sriharikota spaceport on the coast of the Bay of Bengal on November 5, 2013. As many as 500 Indian scientists at ISRO had to work very hard for 15 months to build the satellite. It took the ten months to the Tata’s Nano-size car like Indian satellite to travel 650 million kilometers distance from the earth to the Mars orbit. The satellite is expected to spend next six months on an elliptical orbit from a distance as close as 365 kilometers and as farther as 80,000 kilometers. During this period, it might take various images of the surface of the red planet, apart from studying its atmosphere. As per the expectation, the Indian satellite has already started dispatching the pictures from the Mars. In its upbeat mood, the ISRO has made plan to send its next follow-up satellite to the Mars between 2017 and 2020.
However, it is not for the first time that India launched its satellite in the space. It was as far back as in April 1975 that India launched its first satellite, Aryabhata, to the space. Between 1975 and 2014, India launched as many as 74 satellites to the space from different vehicles such as from ISRO and also previously from American, Russian, European launch rockets.
Most importantly, the state run ISRO satellite has proved cheapest interplanetary space mission in the world. The spacecraft mission cost $74 million only in India, which is approximately one-tenth of the amount of $671 million spent by the US space agency NASA in sending its recent Maven mission to Mars.
Rejoiced at the success, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated at ISRO’s headquarters near Banglore that India achieved something ‘near impossible.” He added, “If our national cricket team wins a tournament the whole country celebrates. What our scientists have done is far greater.”
No official reaction on this Mars Mission has come from India’s arch rival Pakistan, which does not have any significant space programme. Yet India’s initiative to reach Mars orbit is appreciated by certain quarters even in Pakistan.
Being impressed with the outcome, the American space agency NASA congratulated its Indian counterpart, ISRO on its remarkable success. The US has expressed its interest to exchange information about the red planet with India. David Alexander, Director of the US based Rice Space Institute observed that the technological capability demonstrated by India in course of its Mars mission could be important in future launching operation like the training of flight operations and mission control staff.
Despite the stand-off between India and China on the border issue, the Chinese foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying congratulated India on this success saying, “This is pride of India and pride of Asia, and a landmark progress in humankind’s exploration of the outer space.” Significantly, it is this success that has brought two Asian rivals India and China closer at least in the field of space exploration as they have agreed to launch space mission jointly in future.
In certain corners, the Mars mission is taken as a coup over China. In 2011, China in collaboration with Russia launched its Mars satellite Yinhou 1, but it rebounded back to earth and could not become successful. Similarly, Japan’s Nozomi spacecraft that was launched to Mars in 1998 also failed due to certain fuel problems. Study shows that nearly half of all the spacecrafts so far sent to the Mars orbit failed on account of malfunctioning and so they crashed.
India’s space programme is now set to go a long way in collecting important scientific data. The scientific exploration in the space might come out with most valuable information on such aspects as telecommunications, weather monitoring and navigation. This might not only play a crucial role in stimulating economic growth, but also in enriching technological capability and protecting the security interests of the country.
In future, India might develop its private sector and develop business opportunities in space with a view to providing services to the customers in different parts of the globe. Prospects are huge for India to benefit commercially and reap huge dividend by sending satellite and other vehicles to the space. Thus, there is not much sense in criticism made by certain groups that the money that India spent on Mars mission ought to have been spent on more crucial issues as poverty reduction.
Mars is almost half of the size of the earth and is believed to have been formed around the same time when the earth was formed. It is rocky, cold and has desert like surface. But this red planet has fascinated the human beings on the earth for a long time as there is speculation of possible existence of life there. So in the past they made different explorations to get more and more information about this planet. The discovery of telescope in 1600s helped them a lot in this effort. But it was not until the 20th century that major breakthrough was made in this field when the Soviet Union first of all was able to send its spacecraft to this planet in 1960s.
India’s Mars mission has proved that technology is not the monopoly of the Western nations alone. Even a developing country like India has developed the same level of capability, if not more, as achieved by the West in space technology, which is a matter of pride for all the developing countries. It can be hoped that India’s experience in space technology might prove useful to the developing countries in poverty eradication and also for their overall development.
(Jha is Executive Director of Centre for Economic and Technical Studies in Nepal.)
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