Getting to the Moon

A clear strategy involving private participation and international collaboration is an absolute must for Isro in its lunar mission

On a balmy September day in 1962, a crowd of 40,000 at Houston’s Rice Stadium listened as then US President John F Kennedy declared: “We choose to go to the Moon…” Seven years later, the nation fulfilled his audacious pledge with Neil Armstrong’s historic “one small step for man”.

Fast forward 61 years, another global leader has set forth a similarly ambitious national project: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tasked the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) with putting a human on the Moon by 2040, besides setting up an India-crafted space station by 2035.

Yet, the circumstances surrounding these two proclamations are