The soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 mission’s Vikram lander is an impressive demonstration of the technical prowess of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), making India only the fourth country to achieve a successful controlled moon landing. This achievement is especially exciting, given the crash landing that led to Chandrayaan-2’s partial failure and the very recent setback of a Russian lunar mission. The next stage in the Chandrayaan-3 mission would be the rollout of the Pragyan Rover, after four or five hours of Vikram studying local conditions and checking its systems. Pragyan is scheduled to come down a ramp and then move around the unexplored South Pole of the moon, conducting experiments.
It is supposed to analyse the soil and plasma density at the surface, study possible sub-surface temperature conductivity, and observe local seismic conditions, as well as the earth-moon orbital dynamics. The rover is expected to remain active for the next fortnight (one lunar day), and the results of the studies, whatever they may be, will add to the sum of knowledge about the earth’s satellite. Apart from the blue sky gains in scientific knowledge, the technological capacity developed for missions like this usually finds concrete utilisation on the earth, as has been the case with Isro’s previous missions. The space agency provides a wide range of commercially useful services. Isro is a huge player in India’s communication infrastructure, as well as in providing key inputs for weather services, geographical and geo-mapping information, and it is, of course, also a commercially successful, cost-effective satellite launcher.
The expertise the agency has developed in telemetry and telecommand systems, power systems and management, on-board computers, navigation, radiation shielding, heat shielding, propulsion systems, etc, will serve it well in future. For example, the landing was practically autonomous. The moon is about 1.5 light-seconds away from the earth, which makes it impossible to control the last stages of the landing from here. Reforms in India’s aerospace policies have led to a large number of private entities contributing to this mission. Many Indian companies have already improved their grasp of cutting-edge technology by making components for Chandrayaan-3. Also, in principle, Isro will share its intellectual property and learnings from this and other missions, which would further enhance capabilities of private firms. There are already some 400 Indian startups focused on aerospace. Many larger concerns, such as Larsen & Toubro, Paras Defence, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd, Godrej & Boyce, and HAL, also contributed to the mission, and the listed companies saw their shares shoot up.
Further collaborations between the private sector and Isro should enable all these companies to seek new opportunities in the global aerospace industry. Isro could also see its market share rise after this technological demonstration. This could be significant since Isro has only around 2 per cent market share in the global aerospace sector. The possible applications of many of these new technologies in the defence sector should also not be overlooked. This could give a fillip to the atmanirbhar programme in the defence sector. The sheer enthusiasm a success like this generates should also not be underestimated. There will be many schoolchildren who watched this mission and some of them will surely be inspired to find a life in science in future.
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