‘Our relations with agencies like NASA and ESA have become more equal’

Speaking to Siddharth Singh after the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, the Union Minister of State for Science and Technology said India’s ascent in the next 25 years will be technology-driven and led by its scientific community, especially its space scientists

The Chandrayaan-3 mission and a number of other ISRO projects have been successful at a fraction of the cost com­pared to other space agencies. What is the secret?

That speaks for India’s human resources. We had resource constraints in the past but the passion of our space commu­nity was such that we learnt how to function with limited re­sources. To cite one example, a comparison is drawn between this mission (Chandrayaan-3) and the Russian mission to the moon. The latter was much costlier than our project.

I have held this view for many years that our human resources are extraordinary. They are much ahead of several other countries and they have the capability to make up for financial constraints. That part has now been addressed after Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened up the space sector for private participation as well.

In the case of Chandrayaan-3, another factor was our use of natural, planetary, features. The project was designed to ex­ploit gravitational forces to reach its target: we used the Earth orbit (Chandrayaan-3 made 20 orbital rounds around Earth) and then entered the moon’s orbit. We took longer but the cost was only `600 crore.

Until two decades ago, we were dependent on extensive co­operation with other space agencies to launch our satellites. With the success of complex and challenging missions like Chandrayaan-3 how do you see that relationship changing?

Even now we are collaborating with major agencies, whether NASA or the European Space Agency (ESA). The only differ­ence—and I am glad you asked this question—is that ear­lier, maybe, we looked up to them for several cues. We were in a technologically primitive stage, we were also not fully equipped—it is not like that anymore. We are equally placed and in many ways they (foreign space agencies) look forward to cues from us and Chandrayaan-3 is one of the best examples in this context. The US undertook a manned mission to the moon a long time ago, but the evidence for the presence of water molecules on the moon was brought by Chandrayaan-1. The entire world is looking at us for cues and evidence from Chandrayaan-3 that will further these experiments.

So that way the relationship (with other space agencies) has become more equal. When Prime Minister Modi was in the US, it was the Americans who solicited Indian astronauts to the space station. All this also gives a lot of self-esteem to Indian pro­fessionals and scientific experts.

This is one side of the equation; the other is the competition for the more lucrative commercial applications and our ability to harness that market. Is there competitiveness with other space agencies in that area?

There is, but it has more or less been a healthy competition in the space sector because there are very few countries venturing into it. Even when it comes to the moon, we are only the fourth country to mark its presence there. There was more supplementation in this area but we have had greater collaboration with Russia and now we are multi-aligned.

Now that a complex mission has been accomplished, what are the future expectations from the space scientific community in the country? Some more challenging projects, such as a potential mis­sion to Mars?

At the moment, our immediate mission would be the ambitious Gaganyaan.

You have credited the scientific community with these successes. What has been the role of policy­makers in this process?

There has been a huge departure from the past. I have no hesitation to say that Prime Minister Modi has the ability to break the taboos of the past and that he has done this effec­tively. No one thought that one day the space sector would be brought out of the shackles of self-im­posed secrecy. People had stopped expecting changes in this area. These changes have taken place in the last three to four years.

Our budget (for the space sector) has increased by more than 100 per cent and the overall science and technology budget has also gone up. If you see space as such, alone, there has been a 140 per cent increase in the last 10 years. The other aspect is the supple­mentation of funding through the private sector for which the space sector has been opened up. We are also launching a National Research Foundation that will boost funding in this area.

Chandrayaan-3Destination MoonIndian scientistsIsroJitendra Singhspace exploration