Students celebrate the successful moon landing of India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission last August in Guwahati.Anupam Nath (AP)
It’s a September morning and in a meeting room at the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium in Bangalore, AS Kiran Kumar recalls his early days at India’s National Space Agency (ISRO), which he would lead between 2015 and 2018. It was in 1975 when New Delhi, he says, managed to put its first satellite, Aryabhata, into orbit. The Indian device was fired by a missile from the Soviet Union, which had a close relationship with the South Asian giant. The USSR was a superpower at the time and had managed to send a cosmonaut into space more than a decade earlier. A few weeks ago, in August, two devices approached the south pole of the moon to land there. One was Russian and he failed. India has done it by becoming the first country to place an object in this interesting area of Earth’s natural satellite.
Headquartered in Bengaluru, ISRO’s achievement in space represents the changing state of power on Earth. Russia, which inherited most of the USSR’s exceptional capabilities, now has major assets in this sector However, it has not been able to return to the moon since then. The two main protagonists of the new space race are the two undisputed superpowers USA and China. In the first case, a very active private sector contributes to the strength. But the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission made it clear to a global audience that India is already and undoubtedly will be a leading player in this race.
Kiran Kumar was involved in the creation and development of this mission. He was a planning member of the first phase (in which he also carried out technical tasks), the second (which began shortly after the end of his term at the helm of the agency) and the current phase, in which he helped draw lessons from previous failures . and continues to collaborate on operational aspects of post-landing.
AS Kiran Kumar, at the Nehru Planetarium in Bangalore, in September. Andrea Rizzi
“India launched its program with the aim of improving the country’s capabilities and supporting growth and development. He was probably the only one who started without military intention,” says Kiran Kumar, 72 years old and very affable. “Our goals were communication, broadcasting, meteorological observation. For example, we set up a program that helped fishermen by studying chlorophyll levels in the seas.” These were the times of developmentalism in an India that had achieved independence, but in a similar way to its large neighbor China Poverty languished.
The world has changed a lot since then and India itself is changing. With these metamorphoses, the Indian space program is also experiencing significant development. The rise of China is one of the driving elements of change. Beijing, increasingly assertive internationally and repressive at home, maintains close ties with Pakistan, a neighbor with which India lives in constant tension. The two giants have dangerous territorial disputes. A pivotal moment was when Beijing tested the launch of its first anti-satellite missile in 2007. India did the same in 2019.
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“We are experiencing major changes. On the one hand, the space industry is growing. On the other hand, it is becoming increasingly clear that space is a domain where other types of advantages can be achieved,” says Kiran Kumar. “This is ongoing and India cannot remain idle for security reasons. Even if you just want to maintain your position, you have to move to stay the same. In this sense, the lunar mission was a stimulating challenge for our space sector. And it is from this perspective of progress that we also need to see the changes in regulations and policies, for example to make it easier for more private companies to participate. The government is moving,” he emphasizes.
The Chandrayaan-3 rover on the lunar surface.ISRO
Since 2020, the Narendra Modi government has driven changes that will facilitate the proliferation of businesses in this sector, and indeed India now has a vibrant private sector. It offers several advantages, both geopolitical and market-related.
Shaju Stephen, president and CEO of Aadyah, a space company founded in 2016 with a handful of global customers, describes it this way at the company’s headquarters in Bengaluru: “On a global scale, there are only six space companies with capabilities in the space sector from design to launch. USA, EU, Russia, China, Japan and India. We are known for knowing how to achieve this at the lowest possible cost. Looking at these six options, you can see that global companies do not want to switch to Russian or Chinese technology because working with these countries is challenging. The US has numerous export controls because space is a dual technology with military applications. So in a sense the competition is between the Japanese and the Europeans. The Japanese have cost and language barrier problems. Europeans aren’t cheap either. “So we are in an optimal market situation,” he says.
As Stephen points out, the Indian space sector is notable for its great ability to contain costs. The Chandrayaan-3 mission cost just $75 million [unos 70,7 millones de euros]. Its launch technology has also contained costs and proven highly reliable, driving down insurance premiums, although it has a notable competitor in the Falcons from Space-X, Elon Musk’s company.
In early September, a few days after the lunar success, India launched a rocket for a solar mission that will travel 1.5 million kilometers to a point from which it will reach the Sun (which is about 150 million kilometers from Earth) within four months ) will examine earth).
ISRO is also preparing for its first manned space mission, which could take place as early as 2024. India is well behind the USA and China in the space race. Due to lower technological performance and fewer resources, it is not foreseeable that the country will be able to close the gap in the medium term. But his ambition is enormous. In his address to the nation on the 75th anniversary of Independence, Modi called on the private sector to join the grand effort to “dominate the world”. His rhetoric and his plans suggest that he sees a horizon, both on Earth and in space, where India can become the third superpower within a few decades, perhaps behind the United States and China but well ahead of other players.
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