The spectacular success of India’s moon mission, Chandrayaan-3, is a major milestone in the country’s space history. India is only the fourth country in the world to achieve a soft-landing on the lunar surface and the only one to do so on the moon’s icy South Pole. That it was done at a frugal $75 million budget adds to the sheen of the success.
India is already in several ‘elite clubs’ — it is among seven countries to have an inter-continental ballistic missile system, among only four countries to have an anti-ballistic missile system and among four to have an anti-satellite weapon (ASAT). And now, Chandrayaan-3 has added the country to one more of the ‘very-few-countries’ list. There is no doubt that Chandrayaan-3 has enhanced India’s standing in the world, yielding geopolitical spin-offs.
If Chandrayaan-3 stands tall, it is because it rises on the shoulders of its two predecessors, deriving lessons from them. Chandrayaan-1 launched on October 22, 2008, was to demonstrate (or test) India’s ability to send a spacecraft to lunar orbit. There was no attempt to land on the moon, though it did hard-land a Moon Impact Probe with a tricolour motif, which went down taking pictures. Chandrayaan-1 was lost before it completed its two-year service period, but not before it provided conclusive evidence for the existence of water-ice on the moon, perking up global interest in the satellite, because water is rocket-fuel. Chandrayaan-2, on July 22, 2019, failed to soft-land the lander, but provided rich data and learnings, not to speak of the orbiter, which is still in a lunar orbit and served as a communications backup for Chandrayaan-3.
All three missions together cost around $265 million. The success of Chandrayaan-3 has proven that the increasing budgetary allocation to ISRO is money-well-spent. The Department of Space received ₹5,169 crore from the Budget in 2013-14, which gradually rose to ₹10,530 crore in 2022-23 (RE) and to ₹12,544 crore for the current year. However, these allocations are modest, given India’s lofty ambitions. The upcoming missions — the human space mission, Gaganyaan, and the sun mission, Aditya L-1 — are as prestigious as Chandrayaan-3, perhaps more complex. But on the drawing board and in the labs are highly ambitious programmes, such as the Hypersonic Air-breathing Vehicle Assembly (HAVA) that can deliver payloads to low-earth orbits cheaper, the reusable launch vehicle, the Radio Thermoelectric Generator, which is a nuclear engine and the spaceplane, AVATAR, which can, like the US space shuttle, go to space on the back of a rocket and descend on a runway like an airplane. Such projects require higher outlays. Riding the Chandrayaan high, ISRO could expedite delayed projects — such as the development of the semi-cryogenic engine, the methane (LOx) engine and the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV). But for now, it’s time for celebration — the country is over the moon.