A giant step

There is nothing loony about India’s moon mission, which will get off the starting blocks with the launch of Chandrayaan-I on Wednesday.

It comes 39 years after first moon landing, and 50 years after the space race began between the US and the then Soviet Union. The Americans had abandoned its moon missions in the mid-1970s and focus shifted in the 1980s and 1990s to space exploration and the International Space Station project.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has been meticulously upgrading its satellite launch vehicles with the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), and it is moving towards the Geo-Synchronic Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSL) model.

India is a player in space  programmes, but the projects so far have been about slotting
communication and other satellites in the near earth orbits — so crucial for global telecommunication  networks that underpin the  information society.

With Chandrayaan-I, India enters another league. This is the first major step on the part of India to do research work on its own. The lunar missions of the past have not really unravelled all the scientific aspects of the earth’s natural satellite.

Exploring the moonscape for minerals, and even possible fuels remains to be accomplished. It would be a mistake to dismiss the Indian effort as a me-too enterprise; it would be fairer to say that it picks up from where the former moon  missions left off.

There are two aspects to the Chandrayaan project. The first is the very exercise of putting a satellite in the lunar orbit to study the planet closely. It is an artificial window to the moon. This exercise hones the skills of Indian scientists to place vehicles, modules and satellites of various sizes in the space.

The other is the study of the moon itself, which is going to expand our knowledge of the nearest planet that orbits round the earth. It will open up fields which could be of immense importance in the future.

There is of course the public relations quotient of the whole enterprise. Chandrayaan-I is going to place India in the league of the few countries engaged in space research, and it is certainly a national morale booster.

At a time when things look quite gloomy on the economic and political fronts, we have cause to rejoice in the country’s ever-growing capability in the frontier field of space research and exploration. Commercial spin-offs are aplenty, and it could serve as an ignition key of economic growth. Our space scientists have earned our admiration.