Dielectica dives through India’s milestone events in space science – and summarizes as they appear
Correspondence prepared by: Ayan Dey (7th September, 2020 11:59 IST)
From a simple beginning in the early 1960s, India’s journey to the space has achieved several milestones. These include fabrications and launching of satellites, space vehicles, orbiter missions etc. This dream journey has started when Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, known to be the Father of Indian space programme formed an organization in 1962 named Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR). In 1969 the INCOSPAR was renamed as Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). The Indian Space Research Organizations has completed 50 years of its glorious journey, since its foundation on 15th August, 1969. Its journey started from ARYABHATTA, BALLON experiment, BHASKARA-I, APPLE (India’s first geostationary experimental communication satellite, 1977-83), INSAT-IA, INSAT-IB, PSLV to highly classified missions like Chandrayaan-1, 2 and Mangalyaan (India’s first deep space mission). Today, the annual budget of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is more than 10 thousand crores ($1.45 billion). The people who made it happen with their extraordinary visions and sheer hard work were – Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, U.R. Rao (who had developed
18 satellites (including Bhaskara, APPLE, INSAT and many more)), Rakesh Sharma (the first Indian to venture into space), A.P.J. Abdul Kalam also known as ‘Missile Man of India’ and many others. The most interesting and biggest discovery among all expeditions conducted by ISRO was tracing water on the Moon. Chandrayaan’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) experiment (2008) has shown evidence of water on the Moon. An even bigger success was India’s first deep space mission to Mars: the “Mars orbiter mission (MOM)” (2014). With that, India became the first country to have ever succeeded in orbiting the Mars after the failures of the US, China and Russia. It was the first major breakthrough after the GSLV Fat Boy failure in 2010.
ISRO has announced its next 10 years plan, consisting of some new mega missions. The most notable one among these is: GAGANYAAN – India’s first ever manned mission, this project will make India the fourth nation in the world to achieve that benchmark. Approximate budget of this mission is INR 10,000 crore and it will be India’s biggest and boldest space mission till date. It is intended to send a maximum of 3 astronauts for a minimum of 7 days by the year of 2022.
This manned-mission spacecraft basically consists of service and crew module, which is collectively known as the orbital module. GSLV MK-III, the three-stage heavy lift launch vehicle will be used for the launch of GAGANYAAN, as it is capable of carrying a high payload capacity for different application fields. This spacecraft is designed to carry 4-ton class of satellites into the Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) and about 10 tons to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Its powerful cryogenic stages help it in placing heavy payloads into the Low Earth Orbit’s 600 km altitude. Due to the huge amount of payloads, it uses two very strong rocket boosters (S200), to produce huge amount of thrust to lift the Spacecraft. Some key points about the GAGAANYAAN are –
- It consists of two models i.e. crew and service. The crew model, where the three astronauts will be staying, will have a mean diameter of 3.7 m and height 7 m.
- It will take maximum of 15-16 mins for earth’s parking orbit insertion.
- It will be placed 300-400 km off the low earth orbit (LEO).
- The spacesuits for this mission are being developed at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Bengaluru, India which will be orange in colour.
- The astronaut can breathe by these space suits for an hour, with the capacity of holding one oxygen cylinder.
- The astronaut will be able to see the sunrise and sunset and also able to do some experiment about the microgravity with the help of the crew capsule module. This capsule will rotate around the earth for every 90 minutes.
- After the accomplishment of whole mission, the capsule will land at the coast of Gujarat (maximum 36 hours to land).
- French Space Agency CNES will assist ISRO in providing expert advice in various fields viz. space medicine, health monitoring of the astronauts etc.
Apart from this, ISRO has planned other classified missions for the near future –
ADITYA-L1: This is basically will going to be ISRO’s first planned mission to study the Sun’s corona and its atmosphere.
MANGALYAAN-2: India’s second mission again to the MARS as an Orbiter-2 (2022 – 23)
CHANDRAYAAN-3: This will be going to the India’s third lunar mission (late 2020s).
VENUS MISSION: It is basically a Venusian mission to study its surface and atmosphere which is Earth’s closest siblings due to their similarities in their sizes (2023 – 25). The proposed satellites for this mission will weight about 175 kg of payloads and 500 watts of power.
Another one, probably the most interesting yet challenging one as we may call it: a dream to have India’s own international space station. This will wind up by 2028. The proposed station will be about 15-20 tonnes hosting people for more than 15 days. As India is moving with the ‘Make in India’ dream, these missions are not very far off from reality. Right from the first launch from an old church at Kerala, India’s journey to space has been quite remarkable throughout the last 50 years and an a member of the Elite Space Club it will also set a milestone for all other developed countries across the globe who are yet to succeed in space.
Reference : INDIA IN SPACE : Harper Collins Publishers India 2020 JJ Imprints Pvt Ltd, Noida, P-ISBN- 978-935-357-641-7