India shoots for the Moon
Published on Oct 22, 2008 at 10:40 am.
2 Comments.
Filed under space exploration.
India’s space agency, ISRO, has successfully launched that nation’s first payload beyond Earth orbit. That payload is the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. It will join China’s Chang’e 1 and Japan’s Kaguya (SELENE) spacecraft, which are already in orbit around the Moon. The United States is now planning to launch its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in the spring of 2009. Several other missions are also in the works. About a year ago, I wrote about the flurry of space missions to the Moon. Since then, some of the timelines have changed, with several missions being postponed.
It may seem as if there is another space race going on. Back in the 1960s, the Soviet Union and the United States were both sending spacecraft around the Solar System nearly as fast as they could build them and the rockets to carry them. But, in those days, those space agencies were competing with one another. Sure, scientists wanted to study the Moon and planets, but the missions were as much about national prestige as they were about science. So, it is no wonder that as the cold war waned, so did space exploration. That is not to say that we do not have an active program today. We do. The United States has more active spacecraft studying the Solar System right now than we ever have had in history. And, there are spacecraft from Japan, China, the European Space Agency, and now India that are actively investigating beyond Earth orbit. In fact, there are so many missions that I can’t hardly keep up with them all. But, best of all, most of these missions are being done in the public eye, with the scientific results being shared with the whole world. Rather than duplicating efforts, these various space agencies are sharing their data freely amongst themselves. Many missions are joint projects. ESA flies instruments on NASA spacecraft and NASA has an instrument on India’s spacecraft. There are also plenty of other examples of collaborative effort. Since the various programs are sharing data, then they don’t have to each launch spacecraft to do the same thing. Many of these missions overlap, but they don’t really duplicate one another. The current flurry of lunar missions is no exception. They are all part of the International Lunar Decade (IDL), jointly proposed by members of the Carnegie Institution and the Planetary Society. Granted, the IDL is not a formal arrangement of any sort, but many scientists and space agencies are buying into the idea, or if they are not buying into it, they at least are using the idea that they are cooperating in the effort for their public images.
India’s Chandrayaan-1 is something that India can be proud of. The public perception of India in the United States seems to be that it is a backwards technologically unsophisticated third world nation bereft with poverty. We tend not to think of India as being very technologically advanced. Of course, that public perception is a bit out of whack with reality. There have been a number of world renowned scientists who have come from India. Also, India has nuclear weapons (and thermonuclear weapons), rockets, and dozens of satellites that they have launched themselves. A phenomenal number of doctors and engineers come from India. Computer programmers are also common in India. And, whenever you call for technical support for many American companies, you are routed to a call center in India. Poverty and overcrowding may be a bigger problem in India than in the United States, but it is by no means the defining characteristic of that nation. India is a major player in the world today. So, it is no wonder that they would have an active space program with goals of participating in interplanetary research. The world has come a long way from the days when the only space faring nations were the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
-Astroprof
Images courtesy ISRO
India to moon on October 22, 2008 at 11:57 am: 1
This is India’s first mission. World’s 68 th mission. India will be the 5 th country to take part in the moon race.
CCPhysicist on October 25, 2008 at 7:44 pm: 2
Excellent point about the quality of India’s educational system, although a big part of its success can be attributed to its family values. Their families clearly value education. Or, at least, the ones that I have encountered in the US certainly do, although that is a trait shared by most of the immigrants who I encounter teaching at my CC.