Chandrayaan 3: Soft landing with strong marks; Bharat creates history

On August 23, 2023, India became the fourth country in the world to make a historic soft landing on the Moon with Chandrayaan-3, and the first nation to land on the lunar South Pole.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)’s Chandrayaan-3 mission caught the attention of not just India but also the rest of the world. The mission has not only cemented India’s status as a global superpower in space in the league of the United States, China, and the former Soviet Union for having achieved a soft landing of its spacecraft on the lunar surface but also because of another exclusive achievement.

“Chandrayaan-3’s triumph mirrors the aspirations and capabilities of 140 crore Indians”
— Narendra Modi, PM

Chandrayaan-3’s landing site is closer to the Moon’s South Pole than any other spacecraft in history has ventured. The moon’s south pole is believed to be home to water ice deposits and could prove to be an area of scientific and strategic interest for spacefaring nations.

Secretary, Department of Space and Chairman, ISRO, S Somnath said, “Let me thank the people behind the success of this mission. The Project Director ofs Chandrayaan-3, P Veeramthuvel, Associate Project Director Kalpana, the Missions Operations Director Srikanth, and M Sankaran the Director of U R Rao Satellite Centre.”

“I once again congratulate the ISRO team and all fellow citizens for successful deployment of Pragyan-rover from inside Vikram-lander. Its rolling out a few hours after the landing of Vikram marked the success of yet another stage of Chandrayaan -3 ” — Droupadi Murmu, President

The spacecraft was launched on July 14 at 14:35 IST from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota Range (SDSC SHAR), India. Chandrayaan-3 – whose name in Sanskrit translates as a spacecraft to the Moon, consists of a propulsion module, a lander module- Vikram (named after Indian space programme pioneer Vikram Sarabhai), and a rover Pragyan (Sanskrit for wisdom), all of which are operated from ISRO’s Spacecraft Control Centre in Bengaluru. The lander carried the rover in a compartment with a ramp for deployment onto the surface, which it successfully achieved soon after landing.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi Modi joined the ISRO team via video link to witness the Chandrayaan-3 landing as he was in South Africa to attend the BRICS summit. PM Modi hailed the landing on the Moon as the “victory cry of a developed India”, adding that “this success belongs to all of humanity”, not just India.

“Until now no one had landed on the south pole of the Moon. Our scientists after long hard work have achieved this feat of landing first in the south pole. With vision of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam which envelopes the whole world with its affection, India is moving towards becoming a country that provides peace and prosperity to the world” — Dr Mohan Bhagwat, Sarsanghchalak, RSS

Chandrayaan-3’s triumph mirrors the aspirations and capabilities of 140 crore Indians, PM Modi tweeted. He said all countries, including from the Global South, can now “aspire for the Moon and beyond”.

One lunar day lasts about 14 Earth days and one lunar night is approximately just as long. The date August 23 was chosen for landing the Chandrayaan-3 on the lunar surface as the lunar day there has just begun, giving the mission team a stretch of 14 Earth days to carry out research.

On August 24, after the Pragyan rover had taken a cool amble on the Moon’s rocky and dusty surface, ISRO tweeted, “Chandrayaan-3 Mission:

Chandrayaan-3 ROVER: Made in India

Made for the MOON!

The Ch-3 Rover ramped down from the Lander, and India took a walk on the Moon! More updates soon.”

The intrigue of the lunar South Pole

The landing site has also been the key focus of the Chandrayaan-3 mission. The spacecraft got its mission clearly charted out.

Leroy Chow, a retired NASA astronaut, told CNN that the Lunar South Pole is of great interest to scientists as parts of it are constantly in the shade as the Sun never shines on those areas. Therefore, the idea is that there could be ice there that could be used in a number of different things. Frozen water or ice from the craters can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket propellant for future crewed missions. Therefore, NASA is particularly interested in that region.

Chow also added that the region possibly has mineral deposits and possibly higher concentrations of valuable elements there. The propulsion module/orbiter that ferried the lander and the rover in its belly has been programmed to carry out various designated tasks:

PRAGYAN ROVER

The Pragyan rover is mounted on a six-wheel rocker-bogie wheel drive assembly. It is equipped with navigation cameras and a solar panel that can generate 50 W. It communicates directly with Vikram Lander via Rx/Tx antennas. The rover’s instruments will be used to investigate the composition of nearby lunar surface material. The lander module is equipped with instruments to measure the surface temperature and seismic activity around the landing site, a laser retroreflector provided by NASA, and more. The Pragyan rover has carried two instruments to study the local surface elemental composition, an Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and a Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS).

VIKRAM LANDER

The tests that the Vikram lander will carry out are:

Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) to measure surface thermal properties, The Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) to measure seismicity around the landing site, The Radio Anatomy of Moon Bound Hypersensitive Ionosphere and Atmosphere (RAMBHA) to study the gas and plasma environment and a passive laser retroreflector array provided by NASA for lunar ranging studies.

Meanwhile, the Propulsion Module/Orbiter will remain in orbit and conduct an experiment called the Spectropolarimetry of HAbitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) to study Earth from lunar orbit.

“We learnt a lot from failure and corrected it. It is now 14 days of work and we have to conduct experiments”
— S Somanath, ISRO Chief

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of India’s Moon landing is the shoestring budget that the country spent to achieve the mission. Reuters reports that space is now a business, and the Moon’s South Pole is a prize because of the water ice there that planners expect could support a future lunar colony, mining operations, and eventual missions to Mars.

Chandrayaan-3’s success will certainly help India’s space sector to capitalise on this well-deserved reputation for cost-competitive engineering. ISRO had a budget of around just Rs 613 crores ($74 million) for the mission, which is a rather modest figure, compared to NASA’s plan to spend roughly $93 billion on its Artemis moon programme through 2025. One can safely say that Chandrayaan-3’s price tag is on par with the lowest-cost private lunar lander projects in the US.

For those who understand film production budgets better than space travel budgets, Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film “Interstellar” cost $165 (Rs 1,365 crores, roughly). Compare that with Chandrayaan-3’s cost of nearly $74 million or Rs 613 crores. The stunningly low cost also made billionaire space magnate Elon Musk of SpaceX laud India. The success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission also holds immense promise for India’s economy, technology sector, and global standing in space exploration. At first glance, one may notice only the national pride, but probe deeply into the economic aspects of it and you realise that its success could usher in a new era of economic growth, job creation, and technological innovation.

This success leverages India’s position as a significant player in the emerging space races focused on building permanent lunar infrastructure. In a ceremony held at the Intercontinental Willard Hotel in Washington, DC on June 21, 2023, India became the 27th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, demonstrating its commitment to sustainable and transparent space activity. This opportunity can provide India the chance to collaborate on resource utilisation and cutting-edge technology in the Artemis sphere, where Russia and China have stayed out as the latter two are collaborating on a Moon base and the International Lunar Research Station.

There will likely be a rise in demand for highly skilled workforce in various fields, such as science, engineering, and other technical disciplines. There is bound to be an uptick in various jobs that demand skillsets to become research scientists, engineers, technicians, and administrative staff. ISRO has already shown how transferring its cutting-edge IMS-1 Satellite Bus Technology to Alpha Design Technologies Private Limited can be a significant step towards enhancing private industry participation in the Indian Space sector.

In the space sector, ISRO follows PM Modi’s vision of AatmaNirbhar Bharat or an India that is self-sufficient.

“PM Modi took a decision to open the space sector for private participation. Today because of this within 3 years, the number of startups has reached 150 in ISRO…Today Cabinet has approved Indian Space Policy 2023 which in brief would offer clarity to the role of each of these other components which have been set up to enhance the role of the space dept, to give a boost to the ISRO missions,” Dr Jitendra Singh, Deputy Union Minister, said on April 6, 2023.

The European Space Agency, which collaborated with ISRO on the tracking activity of Chandrayaan-3, has expressed hopes to support India on the upcoming Aditya-L1 solar mission.

ISRO’s journey: From bicycle to the moon

Though the Congress Party likes to attribute the current success of ISRO to the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, that is far from the truth. Though Congressmen hype that on February 23 1962, the Indian National Committee for Space Research or INCOSPAR was established by the Government, the pioneers of India’s space mission – Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai – did not have it easy.

An image of the first satellite launch by India on November 21, 1963, is now viral, showing a rocket being transported on a bicycle as one man holds it steady and the other pushes the bicycle. Celebrated scientist and former President of India, the late Dr APJ Abdul Kalam wrote in his book Ignited Minds: Unleashing The Power Within India that a church was used as a workshop, and cattle sheds served as storage houses and laboratories. With basic amenities and facilities for any office missing, the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) facility at Thumba in Thiruvananthapuram had no canteen, and therefore, the scientists would cycle every day to the railway station for their breakfast and dinner. Dr Kalam also wrote that even rocket parts and payloads were transported by bullock carts and bicycles because of the lack of vehicles to carry them. ISRO was formally established in 1969.

Netizens have not forgotten a racist, derogatory, and controversial cartoon published by the New York Times following India’s budget mission to Mars, Mangalyaan, in 2014. The newspaper had later apologised for the caricature that showed a moustachioed Indian man, clad in a turban and dhoti, holding the reins to a cow, knocking at the door of a room with two western-attired men clad in tuxedos and reading a paper with the headline ‘India’s Mars Mission’. The room had the words ‘Elite Space Club’ printed on the windowpane. The total cost of Mangalyaan – the Indian mission to Mars (Mangal) – was put at Rs 4.5 billion ($74m; £45m), which makes it one of the cheapest interplanetary space missions ever.

Woman Power to the fore

When the ISRO Chairman greeted all immediately after Vikram Lander carrying the Pragyan rover made a touchdown on the lunar surface, he thanked PM Modi for unflinching support and also several scientist colleagues who were instrumental in the success of the mission. Deputy Project Director of the Chandrayaan-3 mission Kalpana K was one of the four who stood on the podium.

“It is the most memorable moment for me and my team. This is what we have strived for the past so many years. We achieved our target,” said Kalpana.

ISRO has seen numerous women scientists rise to “man” powerful and responsible positions in several missions.

Dr Ritu Karidhal Srivastava, popularly known as the “Rocket Woman of India” played a vital role in making the launch of Chandrayaan-3 a success. When ISRO launched its third lunar mission-Chandrayaan-3, on board the heavy-lift LVM3-M4 rocket at Sriharikota Space Centre on July 14, Ritu Karidhal was the toast of the nation.

“ISRO has a legacy which is very painstakingly cultivated. The team owns up the mission for a lifetime and the “SOP” followed there is a perfect blend of Indian tradition and the most updated modern technology” —Dr Jitendra Singh, Union Minister

One may recall how in 2014, when ISRO successfully put a satellite into orbit around Mars, a photograph that went viral across the world showed women dressed in gorgeous saris with flowers in their hair, celebrating the success of the mission Mangalyaan. Not only in the administrative staff but also as key scientists ISRO boasts of several women space researchers who had worked on the mission and were in the control room at the time of the launch. There was Ritu Karidhal Srivastava, a mother of two young children, who was the Deputy Operations Director of the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM). Nandini Harinath, the daughter of a maths teacher mother and an engineer father, was the Deputy Operations Director of the Mars Orbiter Mission, and her colleague Anuradha TK, the senior-most woman officer at Isro headed the Geosat Programme as its Director at Isro Satellite Centre. Anuradha TK specialises in sending communication satellites into space at least 36,000 km from the Earth’s centre.

Women in STEM subjects are no longer an exception but rather a norm now – a far cry from the early 1970s when a young Sudha Murty had to write to JRD Tata regarding a notice posted at her institute of a job opportunity, which discouraged women from applying for the role. The legendary Tata responded and allowed the M-Tech degree-holder 23-year-old lady to appear for the test and interview. The rest, as they say, is history.