Indian Mars Mission, so cheap!

India’s Mars orbiter mission tells the world that the more technology was denied the more determined the country became to master space technologies. India has created global history by becoming the first Asian nation to reach the Mars orbit in a space mission. The success is sweeter because this has been done in its maiden attempt. No other country that has attempted a mission to Mars has succeeded in reaching the planet on debut. So, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) can claim that it has done a shade better than accomplished space powers such as the United States and Russia in reaching Mars. 

India took a giant step towards to making its first manned space mission after it successfully launched its latest rocket with a crew module for astronauts. The testing of its Geostationary Launch Vehicle [GSLV] capped a triumphant year for its Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) which completed the cheapest ever mission to Mars in September. It entered the Martian orbit only a day after the American Maven mission but was £365 million cheaper.

India’s prime minister Narendra Modi had joked that it was £13 million cheaper than the Hollywood space hit Gravity starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. 

The new rocket was substantially more expensive, taking a decade and $400 million (£256 million) to develop, but it marks a significant breakthrough in the race to send Indian astronauts into space and eventually make a lunar landing.

Ajay Lele, a defence researcher and the author of Mission Mars: India’s Quest for the Red Planet said the successful launch was a key stage towards launching manned missions but warned it could be another ten years before it achieves its ambition.

“It is a significant development but we were a bit euphoric about it. GSLV is a suborbital launch vehicle and has only passed the liquid and solid engine test. We will need another two years to test the cryogenic (liquid gas) engine”, he said “So far we have been able to carry a payload of three to four tons and to send a manned mission we need higher pay load capacity. If things go well, we are still ten years away from the manned mission”, he said.

But What's So Special About It?

Why everybody lost their mind over this?

On Wednesday, India’s space program signed an agreement with NASA for a joint Earth-observing satellite mission as well as a charter to establish a working group for cooperation on Mars exploration. That comes on the heels of India’s Mars orbiter reaching the red planet’s orbit last week.

India’s Mars spacecraft’s relatively cheap roughly $74 million cost has drawn attention.

NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel has reported that there are several reasons. Among them, according to Brumfiel’s article: less sophistication of the spacecraft compared to NASA’s MAVEN, which also reached Mars orbit last week,  the orbiting path it chose and much lower labor costs.

From the story, which quotes Earth 2 Orbit’s Amaresh Kollipara: First, the spacecraft itself is a lot less sophisticated than its NASA counterpart, and is not designed to last as long. “It’s essentially buying a Honda Civic versus buying a Mercedes S-Class,” Kollipara says. The Indian craft has fewer cameras and scientific doohickeys.

It is orbiting in a big oval with Mars at one end. The downside of that path is that the Indian spacecraft only gets close to Mars once every few days. But fewer firings of the engine meant the Indian spacecraft would need less fuel. That helped keep the weight down to nearly half that of the NASA mission — and that lighter load made it much cheaper to launch.

Secondly, we clearly won the race.

If the 20th century witnessed a “space race” between the U.S. and the USSR, the 21st century is seeing an Asian space race. In most aspects of space technology, China is way ahead of India. It has larger rockets, bigger satellites and several rocket ports. It even launched its first astronaut in space way back in 2003 and has a space laboratory in the making.

In 2008, when India undertook its first mission to moon Chandrayaan-1, China raced ahead and orbited its Chang’e-1 satellite ahead of India. But in this Martian marathon, India has reached the finish line ahead of China. This now puts India in the pole position as far as Asian Martian exploration goes. In 2012, the first Chinese probe to Mars Yinghuo-1 failed. It was riding atop a Russian satellite called Phobos-Grunt. But the Chinese probe failed to even leave earth. Earlier in 1998, a Japanese probe to Mars ran out of fuel.

Today, India’s Mars orbiter mission has shown that the Indian elephant has lumbered ahead of the Chinese red dragon. For the record, ISRO’s chairman Dr. K. Radhakrishnan has gone on record by saying, “We are not racing with anybody. We are racing with ourselves. We have to race to reach the next level of excellence.”

Reasons for this:

To hold costs down, India relied on technologies it has used before and kept the size of the payload small, at 15 kilograms. It saved on fuel by using a smaller rocket to put its spacecraft into Earth orbit first to gain enough momentum to slingshot it toward Mars.

And this Vox story says the spacecraft is mainly a “demonstration of the fact that India has the technology to reach Mars,” but adds that some science will be conducted.

In addition to cameras that will photograph Mars’ surface, it’s equipped with a few different instruments that will analyze the planet’s atmosphere, looking for methane in particular. Scientists believe that, if methane is present, it could be a sign of microbial life. Some previous crafts have detected traces of methane, but the Curiosity rover has failed to find any.

Conclusion

Many have questioned why India should be sending a robotic mission to Mars when there is so much poverty, malnutrition, death, disaster and diseases among its 1.2 billon population. Some have even called this mission as being a part of India’s “delusional dream” of becoming a superpower in the 21st century. There can be nothing farther from the truth. If one analyses the cost of the Mars Orbiter mission of Rs.450 crore, for Indians it works out to be about Rs.4 per person. Today, a bus ride would cost a lot more.

India’s Mars Orbiter mission has paved the way for cheaper and faster inter-planetary probes. 

Mr. Modi, in his stirring speech to ISRO, spoke of its capabilities and efficiencies. It is an eye-opener that a country which can undertake a mission to Mars is unable to provide electricity to 400 million citizens. What is worse is that 600 million Indians still don’t have access to toilets. It is hoped that Mr. Modi would have learnt a lesson or two from the Indian space agency on how to undertake cost-effective projects with no time or cost overruns. 

The Orbiter mission undoubtedly tells the world that India is a space power to reckon with. The more technology was denied to India, the more determined it became to master these technologies.

I just wish after this giant leap and such a marvelous technological advancements, the country men will look back at the dirt spread in the homeland. Both sided development is necessary for any country to progress and become a world power. We have reached Mars, but we are still suffering from the very basic amenities and still struggling with petty issues like women security, etc. Our engineers have once again proved their brilliance to the world and made their mark by their achievement. I wish the technological development we achieved by this achievement, can help and provide useful inputs to eradicate the basic problems we are dealing with.