Uncharted Territory

The next step involves sending humans to space and responding to the changing dynamics of global space business

- Dinesh C Sharma

WHEN THE much-awaited second Indian mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-2, is launched in a few months from now, it will carry a lander that will soft land on the lunar surface at a predetermined location and deploy a rover. The mission will not only be a technological milestone in India’s journey of space exploration but will also be a humble tribute by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to its founder Vikram Sarabhai as the lender has been named after him. In a way, missions like Chandrayaan-2 go beyond fulfilling the dreams of Sarabhai, who initiated India into the space age on November 21, 1963, with the launch of the first sounding rocket from the fishing village of Thumba in Kerala.

The bandwidth India has developed in the space sector in the past half a century is impressive—different types of satellites (ranging from Earth observation to strategic surveillance), rockets capable of placing satellites in different types of orbits, space telescope, deep space and planetary missions, recently even space warfare (in collaboration with the defence research agency) and finally the human space flight in a couple of years from now. Every mission is a technological challenge and has been achieved with a very high degree of self-reliance and capability developed under stiff international technology embargoes.