On the moon and over the moon

India is on the moon and all Indians over the moon. It is a spectacular watershed moment for India’s space programme. The Indian nation stands as one in saluting the scientists and technologists of the Indian Space Research Organisation on the success of Chandrayaan-3.

For the millions who watched Vikram approach its landing site on the moon on Wednesday evening with bated breath, the tension was unbearable. But with Vikram’s perfect soft-landing, Mother India’s heart flowed over with immense joy and pride.

This is a time to celebrate this stellar success. It is also the time to recall the immortal words of Isaac Newton -- If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants-- and commemorate the remarkable Vikram Sarabhai, the ‘father of the Indian space programme’, on whose advice India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru established the Indian National Committee for Space Research, the precursor of today’s ISRO; Satish Dhawan, a superb scientist and the longest-serving chairman of ISRO; U R Rao, who took the risk of multiple failures with the development of advanced rockets, persevered through those failures and paved the way for the PSLV and GSLV rockets of today; and K Kasturirangan, whose tenure marked the beginning of ISRO’s plans to take the leap into space exploration with the Chandrayaan series. Most of all, we must commend the hundreds of ISRO’s men and women who have toiled with resolve, and whose efforts have given flight to India in space.

India began its journey into space in a low-key manner around the early 1960s, in a small church in the village of Thumba in Kerala. Thumba was chosen because the geomagnetic equator passes through it, and there, the church was the only suitable building available at the time. The goal was to conduct research on aeronautical problems and meteorological phenomena up to 200 kms high, below the operational level of satellites. It was decided to establish the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station with the available resources.

India established the Rohini sounding rocket programme for indigenous development and fabrication. India’s early investments in space research demonstrated its overall policy approach: that India’s interests in space had a scientific and social bias; that India saw space research as an instrument for international collaboration undertaken for the greater good of humanity in general; and that India wanted to use such technologies to help solve the country’s real problems -- economic and social. It was in the fitness of things that Prime Minister Modi, while congratulating ISRO, said that this success is not India’s alone, it is one for all humanity.

Since its inception, India’s space programme has been conducted with conceptual as well as operational clarity, with three distinct thrust areas: communication and remote sensing satellites, space transportation systems, and space application programmes. The first ‘Experimental Satellite Communication Earth Station’ was operationalised in Ahmedabad in 1967. This also doubled as a training centre for Indian as well as international scientists and engineers.

ISRO was clear in establishing the principle that a satellite system can contribute to national development and that it did not need to wait for its own satellites to begin application development when, in fact, foreign satellites could be used in the initial stages.

During this time, the first Indian spacecraft, ‘Aryabhata’, was developed and launched with the help of a Soviet launcher. Another significant milestone was the development of the first launch vehicle, the SLV-3, which could place a 40-kg payload in Low Earth Orbit and made its first successful flight in 1980. The SLV-3 programme helped develop expertise in overall vehicle design, mission design, materials, hardware fabrication, solid propulsion technology, control power plants, avionics, vehicle integration, and launch operations. The development of multi-stage rocket systems with appropriate control and guidance systems to  orbit a satellite was a significant milestone in our space programme. During the experimental phase in the 1980s, end-to-end capability demonstration in the design, development, and in-orbit management of space systems, as well as the associated ground systems for users, was performed. The Bhaskara I and II missions were pioneering steps in remote sensing, whereas the ‘Ariane Passenger Payload Experiment’ served as a forerunner for future communication satellite systems. The complicated Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle (ASLV) development, which faced consecutive failures, also demonstrated newer technologies such as strap-on, bulbous heat shield, closed loop guidance, and digital autopilot. This paved the way for learning many nuances of launch vehicle design for complex missions, paving the way for operational launch vehicles such as the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle and Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle to be realised.

The evolution of India’s space research programme can be divided into three phases: the first, from the establishment of the Indian space agency ISRO to India achieving the distinction of becoming a space-faring nation, lasts from 1969 to 1985. The primary goal of India’s space programme was to create a programme capable of utilising space technologies in critical development areas such as communications, meteorology, and natural resource management. The second phase clearly shows that India’s priority from 1985 to 2005 was to achieve this goal. This phase represents the maturation of India’s space programme into a programme on par with other major players in certain sectors. The decade 2005-2015 can be seen as a time when the Indian scientific community took on new challenges and projects, particularly in terms of developing space research for development capabilities.

India’s investments in space over the last four to five decades have enabled better communications, television transmission, mapping, weather observation and forecasting, effective natural resource management, education expansion, advancing telemedicine, and disaster management. In the coming decades, India’s space technology capabilities are likely to advance to the point where it can pursue its programme independently in scientific, commercial, and strategic fields.

India’s space programme has both substantive and symbolic significance. That India has done it, in substantial measure, on her own is something to be proud of. As Captain James Kirk, the commander of the eponymous Starship Enterprise, might say, India is now poised to go where no man has gone before. ISRO, we salute you; we are proud of you.

(The writer is Director, School of Social Sciences, Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences)