What India's space program is planning after successful moon landing | DW News

now the chandrayan-3 Luna Rover has begun exploring the moon's surface after India became the first country to land a craft near the largely unexplored South Pole that Ryan 3 sent back these images of its six-wheeled solar-powered Rover leaving the craft to conduct experiments for the next two weeks the mission of success sparked massive celebrations in India it's only the fourth country to pull off a soft lunar landing and for the relatively low cost of around 75 million dollars India says its next plans are for a crude mission to the Moon Dr namrata goswami is an independent scholar of space policy and a great power politics she's a co-author of Scramble for the skies the great power competition to control the resources of the outer space so welcome back to DW this Mission seems to be going very smoothly yes it is because uh one thing that surprised I think most people is that how soon the Rover was rolled out and so that itself is a great feat and as you mentioned uh it has already sent back images so for me when I'm watching it the one thing that strikes me as critically important about this particular Rover is that now India has a One-Stop lunar technology so it has the ability to launch it has the ability to enter lunar orbits and to the right elliptical orbit break and utilizes propulsion system correctly land on the lunar surface safely which is extremely important especially the South Pole and then finally send out a Rover to study the lunar surface so it is extremely significant from that particular technological feat to my mind right and talk us through what this this Rover is going to be doing for the next couple of weeks a lunar day which is 14 Earth days so the lunar itself has two payloads that has become active as per the Indian space research organizations uh you know the the tweet that they put out on X and so one of the experiment is extremely critical for future missions so one of the payload is going to study the lunar surface for elements like aluminum iron ore titanium and why is that important it's because if you think about habitation that nations are looking to establish on the moon for example India is partnering with the Artemis Accords so that kind of resources can be utilized to manufacture and build on the moon itself right the lunar rover is also uh looking for water ice and to confirm it and that means that it'll be able to sustain those missions that are coming in the future so I think the critical significance of the Rover is that it's going to give us a good map of lunar regolith which is soil explain what the elements are and then offer that data for further missions that are going to come in the next few years and India's next ambition is to send people to the Moon can that be the next step or do you have to sort of practice first sending people into space yeah so uh interesting question so India is uh going to collaborate with the US in terms of the Artemis Accord and the Artemis Accord has Ambitions to uh send the next uh you know uh human the next woman and the first person of color to the moon and India's joined that India has a gaganyan mission which is a human space flight Mission I think the first goal is to send humans to low earth orbit so uh India is now collaborating with the United States to send a mission to the International Space Station next year and so the next step will be the moon so I think you'll have to first sustain in low earth orbit and then look for uh sending humans to the Moon that would be the next step I would see that in the next say uh by 2030 is what I would say and how does that how does the inclusion of living things on a mission like this how does that multiply the difficulty it is very difficult because first of all the lunar surface and the lunar atmosphere it's the lunar basically the moon doesn't have the capability to sustain doesn't have oxygen so or or uh it's got frozen water but now you'll have to turn that water into habitation you will also have to build a habitation module that can sustain human life you'll have to build that entire end-to-end Logistics system so until the time you can build the technology to extract the resources on the moon you'll have to build the capability to launch and and Supply human habitation there and and to also ensure that habitation can be sustained for a longer time till now you had human beings go through the Apollo program but they were never there for a long term and also not for resources or economic perspective so the difficulties are extremely high China is going in 2030 to the moon and setting up a research station by 2036 so you you do have other countries interested in this as well but not yet demonstrated so it'll be an amazing feat if it can be demonstrated successfully and we've seen lots of pictures of Indian people being very happy that this has happened successfully um what have I mean are they too happy to to ask the question what they're actually getting for the 75 million dollar investment in Chandra and three Investments so I think uh overall uh there is of course a sense of pride and happiness and the fact that this is the first time India has gone to a Celestial body but what is fascinating is that there are actually great debates and uh scientific conversations about what this Mission means right and so first of all the cost was a very critical Factor second India just took a decision this year to privatize its entire space manufacturing sector so the path forward now is how does this particular mission that had about 75 million dollars investment return investment that is tenfold how do you actually privatize it to bring the cost down even further and by that what capacity can India actually build for establishing a completely CIS lunar communication ecosystem so by that I mean a communication survival secure safe mission from low earth orbit to the moon so those questions are already being asked and already being mapped out as we fascinating as ever Dr gashwami uh thank you so much for joining us again Dr namrata goswami thank you so much for having me

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Length: 7min 22sec (442 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 27 2023