How will we balance our Space Programme?
India has embarked on the third pillar of its space programme - human spaceflight. The Indian Prime Minister announced the names of the four Indian Astronauts. This, more than the hardware tests or astronaut training, tells me that this is happening.
India has a well respected fleet of remote sensing, communications, and meteorological satellites. It is building capability in operating the Positioning, Navigating, and Timing (PNT) satellites. India’s private sector has capability to build small satellites with remote sensing capability. It is building capability in the assembly, integration, and testing of larger satellites.
It has built four launch vehicles for launching these satellites. Its private sector is building launch vehicles for small satellites.
In 1999, India started working on scientific interplanetary exploration. This led to missions like the Chandrayaan series and the Mars Orbiter Mission. It also led to missions like Astrosat, Aditya-L1, and XpoSAT.
Three other countries have similar capabilities. These are the US, Russia, and China. Among these, the US space programme has been the most transparent. It’s struggles to prioritise missions and funding is well known. Russia has gone through periods of immense struggle to raise funding. China is the most recent member of these nations. It seems to be doing a good job of balancing these priorities today.
How will India balance these priorities?
GSLV-F14 launch successful
GSLV is the GSLV Mk-II
The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) is a GSLV Mk-II. This means that the Cryogenic Upper Stage (CUS) had an Indian cryogenic engine, and not a Russian cryogenic engine. But, ISRO reverted to calling it a GSLV.
The vehicle had a history of being called a Naughty Boy because of the number of times it fell into the Bay of Bengal instead of to the orbit when flying with the Russian cryogenic engine. With the Indian cryogenic engine, it has been better behaved. With today’s success, it has 8 success and only 2 failures. But, those two failures have been random. The last failure had been two launches before this one.
But, I still love this Naughty Boy.
Launch
This launch was a daytime launch allowing maximum naked eye watching time. I absolutely loved the webcast.
INSAT-3DS
The payload that the GSLV was carrying was the INSAT-3DS. It is a data relay transponder, Advanced Aided Search & Rescue, a six channel imager, and a 19 channel sounder. These are basically a meterological and Search and Rescue mission.
This is a follow on to the INSAT-3DR satellite launched in 2016. This satellite had a 10 year mission span. 3DS was launched while the 3DR is in its eighth year of operation. Kudos to ISRO to launch a replacement well before the expiry of the 3DR.
The naming of this satellite doesn’t make sense. The 3DR stood for INSAT-3D Repeat. So, 3DS stands for Second Repeat? The INSAT-3D launched in 2013 has lost the Sounder since 2020.
Inner Mess, Outer Mess
It’s been a really long time since I wrote consistently anywhere - in my analog bullet journal, in my newsletter, at work,or on social media. At work, I have been involved in a transitioning process that does not involve a lot of writing.
This has been compounding “a mess” at a very high rate. In days, not in months. This inner mess has led to an outer mess. It is in observing this outer mess that I realised that there was an inner mess as well. Once I realised this, the rate of compounding of both the inner and outer mess has increased. Writing here is the only way to stop this process that feeds off each other.
I think the blog posts that I have posted here so far are a good representative of the outer mess. I have written four posts so far. The first one is an introduction. The second one is incoherent because I did not put the effort into the post that it needs. The third one is incomplete on the PSLV-C58 mission. The fourth one is a policy piece where I’m trying to argue for a status quo. I’m not sure that’s how these blog posts sounded like. This stems from an inner mess of thoughts not really ordered enough so that I can write something coherently.
Delhi is not far
India setup the headquarters for its space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Bengaluru to stay far away from political influence or interference. Or so, the legend goes. But it’s success has got it Delhi’s attention.
The political interference began with Delhi giving ISRO a target of 2022 for flying an Indian into low earth orbit in an Indian vehicle. The opening up of the space sector and the creation of various institutions to regulate the sector have still not stabilized. The lack of a space act is a big part of this lack of stability.
In a recent podcast episode of The Seen and the Unseen, K P Krishnan suggests that the government is shaking up institutions that it sees as being captured by elites. I wonder if it is doing the same to ISRO and the space sector. If so, this is a welcome move.I think the engineering and the science focus of the space sector may save it more than anything else.
The government is the only institution that can invest in space and wait patiently (as it has for the past seventy years) as it develops. Even with the opening up of the space sector, the sector will need continued patronage of the government to grow. The private sector can, at best, make more efficient use of the capital that the government deploys for developing new technologies and applies it in various fields.
PSLV-C58 and POEM
The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) flew for its sixtieth flight to carry a special X-ray astronomy satellite, XPoSat to orbit. The vehicle reused the fourth stage to move to a different orbit to test experimental payloads.
XPoSat
I have not understood the X-ray polarimetry science despite reading several articles on it that XPoSat will conduct.
So, this is a stand-in post.