Chandrayaan 3 Success & What it Means for the Indian Space Program

Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash

Unless you are living under a rock, you would have seen news about the recent moon missions from India & Russia. While the Russian moon mission wasn’t lucky enough and failed at the end stage, the Indian mission of achieving a soft landing on the southern pole of the moon has been successful.

The Chandrayaan 3 mission was a follow-up mission by India after a failed attempt of Chandrayaan 2 in July 2019. After this success, India became the fourth country to be able to land on the moon and the first country to do so on the southern pole. This feat is commendable and needs to be praised considering the low cost and resource crunch ISRO has faced for years.

In ISROs own words the objectives of this mission are to demonstrate Safe and Soft Landing on Lunar Surface, To demonstrate Rover roving on the moon and, To conduct in-situ scientific experiments.

Chandrayaan 3 details have been taken from ISRO’s page (Source)

What’s Chandrayaan 3?

Chandrayaan is a Hindi word that translates to “vehicle/transport for the moon”. The mission included a Lander and Rover configuration. It was launched from Sriharikota by using LVM3. The propulsion module carried the lander and rover configuration to a 100 km lunar orbit.

Lander payloads: Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) to measure the thermal conductivity and temperature; Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) for measuring the seismicity around the landing site; Langmuir Probe (LP) to estimate the plasma density and its variations. A passive Laser Retroreflector Array from NASA is accommodated for lunar laser ranging studies.

Rover payloads: Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) for deriving the elemental composition in the vicinity of the landing site.

Chandrayaan 3 details have been taken from ISRO’s page (Source)

Chandrayaan 3 details have been taken from ISRO’s page (Source)

Why Chandrayaan 3 success is important?

Since the moment of the successful landing, each individual remotely related to ISRO has been adding the success to their name. Both the opposition and the present government representatives sprung into motion and started claiming their efforts that have resulted in success. It’s easy to understand why everyone is so interested in claiming the success to their name. Because this success is achieved with very limited resources and lays the foundation stone for all future space missions,

the Indian public, which usually is divided on topics of religion, caste, state, language, and political affiliation looked united in praising ISRO and accepting that the department is not recognized as much as other sectors. There is a resource crunch and limitations to the budget. Thus, when someone appreciates they have succeeded, they also need to question “Why did ISRO take so much time and Why didn’t the earlier governments proactively help the institution?” That’s why the individuals from all parties were quick to add their names and show that they were the ones that made the institution successful.

Since this article is not aimed to pinpoint the faults and to engage in a political debate, let me quickly come to the point of why this success is important.

The mission is important because it would trigger:

1. New hopes in the Indian public (political mileage to certain parties)
2. Investment in the companies involved in the mission
3. Interest of students to pursue careers in the space science
4. Foundation of next missions
5. Entry of India into the space elite club which was earlier restricted to developed countries only
6. New funds from governments & Easy grants
7. Public-private partnerships for next critical missions
8. Recognition of ISRO and Indian talent worldwide
9. Nationalist sentiment and boost of scientific temperament

Benefits of Chandrayaan 3 mission for India

1. Scientific Discoveries

The mission would allow Indian technologists to explore the moon and uncover new facts about composition, geology, and potential habitability. It would also help them understand Earth. Data such as Earth’s climate, weather patterns, and natural disasters could be researched with a higher probability of success.

2. Technological Advancement

The moon mission has already used advanced technologies in the Lander such as Altimeters, Velocimeters, Inertial measurements, Propulsion system, Navigation, Hazard detection, and avoidance, etc,

Further, multiple tests were conducted on Earth before launching the mission which helped the scientists optimize the technology. For any similar missions, the team would be ready and would have historical data to relate to.

3. Innovation

Space missions are driven by technological innovation. The challenges of space travel often require the development of cutting-edge technologies that find applications on Earth, such as GPS, satellite communications, and medical devices. It is highly unlikely that the team didn’t invent anything new for this mission. The more missions, the higher be innovation activity

4. Economic Opportunities

As touched upon in the previous paragraph, the success of this mission would make it easy for ISRO to demand and ask for new funds and to lay the foundation for more such missions. It would also boost the confidence of private players in investing in companies working in these technologies. Let us not go into the potential opportunities of discovering new compositions on the moon. That’s a closed box and can be carrying anything. In the event of anything significant (minerals, compositions, medical discoveries, fuels, etc.,) there would be a race of collecting and thus it would fuel a lot of investment in the Indian space sector.

Further, all these things would create jobs, education opportunities, diplomatic and internation collaboration opportunities. This would help India to foster international cooperation and diplomcy.

While the above points look short as statements but they are considerable when applied to a country of 1.3 billion individuals. The big country needs finances, hope, results, and appreciation to keep moving. The success of this mission has created an opportunity to grab all of these for next few years. It has created an opportunity for the next generation scientists, perhaps who would not be held back by resource crunch and non-recognition.

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I write about technology, innovation, the future, life, religion, AI, upcoming changes, and the impacts of various events in the current world.