Slow progress hampers Isro programmes

Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro’s) ambitious planetary science programmes are marred by slow progress in several key projects, including its proposed mission to the Sun.

The Aditya-L1 mission, in which Isro plans to send a probe to the Sun, could not spend almost 50% of its budget  till January 2017, indicating the poor progress in realising the payload.

Similarly, till January 2017, the space agency didn’t spend a single penny from the allocated Rs 4.54 crore on the X-ray Polarimeter Satellite (XPOSAT), approved in 2016-17. On the sensor development for the planetary programme, Isro utilised less than 25% of the money sanctioned last year.

The underutilisation of the budgeted money at Isro remains a concern for the government, which has now been advised by a panel of lawmakers to undertake financial scrutiny of these projects in every quarter to ensure timely completion.

The Aditya-L1 project was allocated a budget of Rs 35 crore in 2016-17, but Isro could spend only about Rs 17.92 crore. Scheduled for a launch in 2019-20, the Sun-bound payload would be carried by the PSLV to an orbit, 800 km away from the Sun to study the corona — the outer layer of the Sun — extending to thousands of kilometres above the disc.

The corona has a temperature of more than a million degrees Kelvin, which is much higher than the solar disc temperature of around 6,000 degrees Kelvin.

How the corona gets heated to such high temperatures is still an unanswered question in solar physics. The XPOSAT, on the other hand, is meant to study hard X-ray sources like pulsars, black hole, active galactic nuclei and supernova remnants among others. But the non-usage of the sanctioned budget for the payload indicates that the payload development work has stopped.

Chandrayan-2 appears to be the only deep space project, which is on track as almost the entire money (at least Rs 80 crore) sanctioned in the last two financial years were spent. With another year to go for the launch, Chandrayan-2 mission received another Rs 50 crore this year.

The space agency has also faulted on its heavier satellite programme. Even though it set a target of sending 14 communication satellites during the 12th plan period (2012-17), Isro could manage to launch only seven communication satellites in the same period.