Why India Is About To Take Over Space!

let's talk about an unsung player in the space race today the indian space research organization india's history of space flight actually dates back to the 1970s and they are one of the very few independent nations or entities to have developed and flown a series of orbital rockets there was a period in the late 90s and early 2000s when india was the go-to provider of cheap satellite launches india has even reached the moon and mars with their spacecraft now things haven't always gone to plan with india's outer space ambitions their most recent sslv rocket test failure only being the latest in a series of misses but when looked at on the whole india has made a significant contribution to human spaceflight and one that i bet most people are either fully or partially unaware of so let's try and fix that this is the space race the indian space research organization actually dates back to the year 1969. it was formed about one month following neil armstrong's first walk on the moon the indians were inspired by the accomplishments that they witnessed but they were also very practical india didn't enter the space race with the intention of winning but they were very well aware of the importance of maintaining a presence in outer space alongside the global superpowers of the united states russia and china so the indian philosophy of space flight was to put the priority on efficiency and keeping costs as low as possible while still maintaining their position at the back of the pack and not being left in the dust which was not a bad idea at all actually if we look at nasa funding over the years as a percentage of the u.s federal budget we can see that the agency had a drastic peak in the 1960s where they were consuming over five percent of the nation's expenses the u.s space program quickly burnt out and collapsed under its own weight even with the philosophy of slow and steady baked into their approach india was still able to launch their first satellite into orbit by 1975. this was the aryabada a research satellite named for a 5th century indian mathematician and astronomer since india had not yet completed development on their own space rocket the satellite rode on a soviet launch vehicle unfortunately the satellite was not particularly successful after just five days all signal was lost from the spacecraft but it was a significant achievement nonetheless and the aryabada is well remembered for its unique 26-sided polyhedron shape that was an archetype of the early space race an illustration of the satellite was printed in india's two rupee bill for decades and it also made an appearance on a soviet union postage stand in 1984. things really started to pick up by 1979 when india completed development of their first rocket and started making attempts to launch their own satellites using the slv or satellite launch vehicle it was a modest rocket at just one meter in diameter and 22 meters tall there were four stages that all used solid propellant rocket engines to lift a maximum of 40 kilograms into low earth orbit the first launch attempt failed in 1979 but the indians would try again one year later and succeed in placing their first satellite into orbit the rohini one this made them the sixth nation to successfully launch a vehicle into earth's orbit india quickly iterated on that design to create the augmented satellite launch vehicle this added two side-mounted boosters to the original rocket structure and by 1992 this had allowed the country to increase their payloads to orbit by deploying a 106 kilogram satellite by 1993 india had applied two decades of research and development to create the iconic polar satellite launch vehicle or pslv this was a massive improvement over the first designs and brought some legitimate muscle to the indian space program this was another four-stage rocket that again used a solid fuel core booster now with a maximum of six strap-on-side boosters for the xl configuration the second stage utilized india's first liquid-fueled engine the v-cass which was essentially just a copy of europe's viking engine but it worked so no shade then they went back to a solid rocket third stage and again to a liquid-fueled fourth stage this upped the launch capacity to just under four metric tons to low earth orbit and just under two tons to polar orbit this rocket became an international staple for providing the cheapest access to outer space and it would go on to complete 53 launches through the late 90s and early 2000s india never swayed from their philosophy of efficient and frugal space flight somehow india managed to develop and build a serviceable orbital rocket with just a tiny fraction of the funding that other nations were throwing into space flight india would spend in a year what nasa would spend in a month and that allowed them to offer flights on the pslv at a heavily discounted rate the cost to launch one kilogram of weight into space on the pslv was about 8 500 while the cost to fly one kilogram on the space shuttle was about 18 000 now eventually spacex would rise up and dominate the low-cost orbital launch market with their reusable falcon 9 booster which eventually drove the cost per kilo of an orbital launch down to just 2600 bucks but india continued on with their mission unfazed in 2008 india made their first interplanetary attempt with the chandrayaan-1 mission to the moon this was a pretty simple objective to get a probe into lunar orbit that would drop a device known as an impactor so the plan wasn't to land on the moon exactly but more like to drop a box full of sensors from orbit and hope for the best luckily for them everything went according to plan the moon impact probe struck the south pole of the moon near the shackleton crater making india the fourth space agency to reach the surface that little box accomplished a lot in its time on the moon including the first official discovery of water molecules in the lunar regolith in 2014 the indian space research organization made another historic accomplishment with the mangalayan mars orbiter mission launched on a pslv xl rocket the probe would go on to successfully operate in mars orbit this made india the fourth space program to reach the planet mars after nasa russia and esa but more significantly india was the first space program to successfully reach mars on their first attempt everyone else failed on the first try it cost india just 74 million dollars to reach the planet mars significantly less money than it would cost to produce the movie the martian that released the next year from there india continued to progress with their rocket program upgrading their launch vehicle again to the gslv now with geostationary orbit capability this swapped out the six solid rocket side boosters with four liquid-fueled hypergolic boosters and the new third stage for the gslv marked india's first hydrogen-powered rocket engine this was upgraded again to the gslv mark iii which went back again to solid-fueled side boosters with the gigantic s 200 strap-ons that allow an increased payload capacity of 10 tons to low earth orbit in a wider 4 meter diameter fairing so all really good so far but india has also taken a few ls along the way the chandrayaan-2 mission was supposed to be another historic triumph for india a legitimate controlled touchdown on the moon with their vikram lander that would go on to study and map the lunar surface the mission launched on the gslv mark iii rocket in july 2019 a month later it had reached orbit around the moon the vikram lander was deployed according to plan and everything seemed to be going great until about halfway to the surface when something went terribly wrong with the vehicle and it seemed to flip upside down at one point with the thruster driving it towards the moon's surface instead of slowing it down vikram impacted the moon at a speed of about 100 meters per second and scattered little bits of debris over several kilometers of lunar surface so that was a bit of a low point but they carried on india's latest rocket development is the sslv or small satellite launch vehicle which is basically a modern take on the same mission as the old pslv cheap and efficient service to low earth orbit satellites have gotten a lot smaller over the last couple of decades so the need for a higher capacity rocket has fallen off accordingly the sslv is designed for a maximum of 500 kilograms to low earth orbit this is where smaller rocket startups like firefly and rocket lab have been able to capitalize in recent years with cheap and lightweight small sat launchers so india are looking to get in on the action unfortunately the first launch attempt of the sslv didn't go as planned and the payload didn't reach orbit though it wasn't a total failure the four-stage rocket completed three successful burns it was only the final module that experienced a software glitch and failed to fire its thrusters for more than .1 of a second in what should have been a 20-second burn india has some really ambitious plans for their future of space flight including another shot at the moon a human space flight and an interplanetary trip to venus the chandrayaan-3 mission is slated to launch next year in 2023 and is essentially a second attempt at what was supposed to happen on the chandrayaan-2 with a lander and a rover on the lunar surface then the plan is to follow that up in 2024 with india's first human spaceflight mission named gaganyan this was aspirationally supposed to happen in 2020 but there were obvious delays and in the meantime the indian space agency has decided to slow down and make sure that everything is as safe as possible the idea is to use the gslv mark iii rocket with the gaganyan crew capsule that is designed to carry three people into space the mission plan is to have the three crew spend a total of seven days in orbit to fully test the capabilities of the new module these would be the first ever indian viominats in space as no indian has ever visited the iss this would again put india in a solid fourth place as a nation that has achieved independent human space flight only the u.s russia and china have done it so far and the future of india's space program now has the planet venus in their sights this is a mission called shukrayan and the objective is to reach orbit around venus and study the planet's surface and atmosphere this is aspirationally planned for a launch date in december 2024 so that's what india has been up to in space now it might not be anything mind-blowing but it's a solid and consistent performance in a space race alongside other nations that have drastically larger budgets and amounts of resources available to them so imagine what would happen if they're successful and that budget continues to increase hopefully you learned something new about india's space program let us know what you think in the comment section below meet us back here every week for 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Channel: The Space Race

Views: 498,074

Keywords: nasa, isro, india, india space, india space budget, space

Id: kh5VIF6Pghk

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 13 2022

Reddit Comments

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Water isn't that high is it?