More than a hundred years ago, space travel was the stuff of science fiction. The idea of actually flying around in a rocket beyond the Earth’s atmosphere was ridiculous.
When Robert Goddard, an American scientist who had wanted to reach out to the stars since he was a child, published a paper theorising how rockets could go to space, he was mocked — so much so that The New York Times mocked him in an editorial in 1920. He received letters of mockery for years and his work was largely dismissed — until of course humans travelled to space.
Forty-nine years after The Times had mocked Goddard for his theories, a rocket built upon the foundations laid by his work took Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin to the Moon. Goddard is today revered as the Father of Rocketry.
Just like going to space was once the stuff of science fiction, the idea of humans being a multiplanetary race appears to be out of a sci-fi novel today, but it is only a matter of time that we reach that stage, says astrophysicist Somak Raychaudhury, who serves as the Vice Chancellor of Ashoka University.
It’s not just the inherent exploratory and migratory nature of humans that makes the case for us to be a spacefaring race, but there are practical reasons as well, says Raychaudhury, who also co-chaired the Working Group on Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Prime Minister.
Raychaudhury tells Firstpost, “We are overflowing the planet and our resources are getting scarce by the day. The critical minerals, such as lithium which is central to electric mobility, are finite whereas the need is increasing every day. From an environmental point of view, there is a very practical case for us to be multiplantary. We would need to expand beyond Earth to fulfil Earth’s need for resources as well as to ensure our continuity.”
India’s place in human spacefaring ambitions
India is set to have a central role in human spacefaring ambitions.
By orbiting Mars and landing on the Moon’s unexplored south pole region, India has demonstrated the ability to plan and execute complex space missions.
After focussing primarily on Earth-centric applications of space for decades, India in recent years has transitioned to a full-spectrum scientific space programme where it is at the forefront of space sciences — space missions like AstroSat and Aditya-L1 and Earth-based initiatives like the LIGO-India and Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) are tell-tale of the transition.
Raychaudhury recalls that he was in the room with Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, the head of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), when AstroSat received the final go-ahead in 1996. He tells Firstpost that while AstroSat nearly took two decades to materialise —it was launched in 2015— the progress has been rapid in recent years.
“Now, we have a whole line-up of scientific missions for space. The AstroSat was a very encouraging project for us as it turned out to be the best of its kind in the world — even better than NASA’s similar satellite. The ISRO is working on a follow-up mission to it. Last year’s Aditya-L1 mission was another such moment that cemented India’s position as a major player in space sciences,” says Raychaudhury.
One of the Aditya-L1’s payloads, the Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT), was developed by the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, when Raychaudhury was its head.
The affordability of India is one of the key strengths. While the ‘jugaad’ approach of India has been mocked at times, it is something to be admired and studied, says Raychaudhury.
“The affordable missions to Mars and Moon were not gimmicky. The cost-effectiveness is a strength of the Indian space programme. The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in Pune is the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope of its kind. We built it at 1/50th of the cost that a Western nation would have incurred. This was achieved through the unique solutions that we came up with. While these solutions are dubbed ‘jugaad’, these are smart solutions instead of being inferior quick-fixes,” says Raychaudhury.
‘The approach to space programme has evolved’
While the ISRO had the monopoly over the space programme for decades, now the academia and the private industry have a great role in the Indian space programme, which is only expected to grow in years to come, says Raychaudhury.
“Private participation, whether from the universities or the industry, is a must for the Indian space programme to grow. In the scientific aspects of the space programme, academia has a much greater role now. For example, the Daksha project to build high-energy space telescopes is being led by IIT-Bombay and AstroSat’s successor INSIST project is also being steered by a consortium of universities and research centres. Such a collaborative and all-hands-on-deck approach is the way forward,” says Raychaudhury.
Moving beyond Earth-centric applications and traditional space exploration, the Indian space programme is now looking forward to studying niche areas as well. Raychaudhury tells Firstpost that projects in the works include studying transient sources, which are celestial objects that suddenly appear or vanish or vary in brightness dramatically on time-scales of hours, months or years; the atmospheres of distant exoplanets; and gravitational waves from distant galaxies emerging from the Big Bang.
India is also part of the select club looking for life in space.
“Under the proposed ExoWorlds project, we will study the atmospheres of exoplanets — planets outside of our solar system. This will include spectroanalysis which will look for signs of life in these distant celestial bodies,” says Raychaudhury.
The Indian human spaceflight programme has of course changed the game altogether — aiming for something Father of the Indian Space Programme Vikram Sarabhai dubbed a fantasy. By working towards setting up an Indian space station and landing humans on the Moon in the next two decades, India is making solid strides to be a spacefaring nation.
The future of spacefaring is collaborative
Whether it is the Indian space programme or humanity’s quest to be a spacefaring race, the future is collaborative.
In India, the collaborative approach has already become a mainstay as the ISRO has opened doors to collaborations with the academia and private sector. Internationally, too, this is the way forward as India has active space-sector collaborations with every major space power whether it’s the United States, Japan, the European Space Agency (ESA), or Russia — the only exception being China for obvious geopolitical reasons.
The same was outlined in the ‘Mega Science Vision 2035: Astronomy and Astrophysics’ presented to the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the PM by the working group co-chaired by Raychaudhury. The group noted that India must be part of the international collaborations as all large upcoming projects are bound to be multinational.
“As the technical and financial demands are huge, most of the upcoming international projects are multinational and multi-institutional in nature. Thus, it becomes imperative to be part of such consortia to be able to lead important scientific programmes…In addition to being part of a mega science project, it is important to have a clear plan to derive maximum scientific outputs,” noted the working group in the report.
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Space Day Special: ‘We’ll inevitably be multiplanetary, India has exciting future in space sciences’
