India and Human space mission

[Indo-guy]

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Thirty years back, India’s first and so far the only astronaut Rakesh Sharma was visiting outer space on a spacecraft of the erstwhile USSR. During the last three decades, ISRO has made significant and commendable progress in various space arena like remote sensing, communication and navigational sectors.

Thirty years back, India’s first and so far the only astronaut Rakesh Sharma was visiting outer space on a spacecraft of the erstwhile USSR. During the last three decades, Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) has made significant and commendable progress in various space arena like remote sensing, communication and navigational sectors. India also has a unique distinction of having one of the most cost-effective and successful deep space programme and one of its craft has already conquered the Moon and another craft is on the way to Mars.

Interestingly, India’s space programme, which matches with the best in the world in many departments, is found lacking in capability in human space missions. The major space powers like the US and Russia are successfully undertaking human space missions for many decades now. Japan, due to its association with the US and its investments in the international space station, is regularly sending humans into space. China has successfully developed its own capabilities for human space missions a decade back in 2003 and developed expertise to undertake space walks. However, India is not anywhere close to undertake even a basic human space mission. What could be the reason behind this? Is it by design or default? It’s difficult to get a specific answer, but probably it is by both design and default. India’s interests into the human space programme were announced by Isro in 2006. However, for all these years, not much dedicated effort has been found to be made towards realizing this aspiration. Presently, there have been some indications that India has plans to undertake a human mission by 2020.

On its part, Isro should be credited that since the 2006 announcement, it has never made any ostentatious claim about the human space mission. But there has been much talk in the media, both nationally and internationally, about India’s plans for human space mission, mainly based on perceptions and at times based on the extrapolation of some of the actual experiments performed by Isro.

The first indications about India’s possible interest towards developing a human space programme became evident in 2007. It was the successful launch and return of Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE-1). SRE was a 550kg capsule launched into a low Earth orbit (635km), and was de-orbited and recovered successfully back after more than two weeks in space. With this experiment, Isro was able to test various technologies like navigation, guidance and control, and hypersonic thermodynamics.

The main success of the mission was the demonstration of Isro’s capability to develop the thermal shield technology for the re-entry phase. Success with such technology is essential for planning any human space mission. It may be recalled that the unfortunate death of the first Indian-American astronaut Kalpana Chawla (2003) happened due to the failure of thermal shield functioning in the space shuttle. However, Isro has been totally silent since 2007 on developing the SRE programme further.
There could be few possible reasons why Isro has not taken any major initiative during the last six-seven years to develop the human space programme.

First, India’s space agenda has a major socio-economic bias. Maybe the techno-political leadership of the country has reached an informed decision that human space programme should not be a top priority for the country.
Secondly, India is keen to invest in robotic missions, which are easier to undertake and more profitable in terms of scientific outputs.

Thirdly, for all these years, India was not in a position to develop the heavy-lift launch capability, which is essential for a human mission. This has happened because of India’s failure with the cryogenic technology for many years. Against this backdrop, the recent announcement about the proposed testing of an uncrewed space capsule is a welcome development. This new module, developed by ISRO and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, is a bit different than SRE and more close to what is required for human flight.

In January, India has successfully demonstrated its mastering of the cryogenic technology with the launch of GSLV-D5. Now, the development of GSLV Mark III is the next step of India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle programme. Isro is planning to test the first stage and strap-on motors in the near future by undertaking a sub-orbital flight.

It has been proposed to use this testing opportunity to also test the Crew Module. This module is likely to be injected into the lower orbit and then made to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere. It will be guided to land in a specified spot, most likely in the Bay of Bengal. However, it would be a basic step towards the development of India’s human space programme. Isro will have to undertake testing of many other technologies before attempting a human space mission. In general, it has been observed that Isro is making some progress in developing a human space programme, but is not in a hurry, probably owing to the limited advantages of such missions. Appreciably, what is good about India’s overall approach towards a human space mission is that it is not unnecessarily getting swayed by hollow talks of nationalism or prestige or an itch to compete with China.

 

[Indo-guy]

The Space Review: Prospects for the Indian human spaceflight program


Prospects for the Indian human spaceflight program
by Gurbir Singh
Monday, March 31, 2014


Out of a population of nearly 1.3 billion, only four Indian nationals have received training for a designated spaceflight mission and only one of them actually made it. This week marks the 30th anniversary of Rakesh Sharma’s eight days in space as part of the Soviet’s Interkosmos program in 1984. He never went back and despite announcements in 2006 that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) would engage in Human Space Flight (HSF), now in 2014 there is no prospect of an imminent launch of an Indian astronaut by ISRO. However, a single successful rocket launch early this year suggests that ISRO may finally be making some headway.
ISRO has been working quietly in the background on the development of an astronaut training program and an astronaut crew vehicle.
The 2006 announcement was probably triggered by the October 2005 success of the second Chinese spaceflight with astronauts. But India was not ready to go it alone. During the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to India in December 2008, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed that would put another Indian in space using Russian spacecraft in 2013, followed by another in 2015 aboard an Indian launcher. That MoU agreement was abandoned in 2010. In December 2013, following a series of statements in the media about India’s manned mission to the Moon, ISRO issued its own statement emphatically asserting that it had no plans for human moon mission.
However, ISRO has been working quietly in the background on the development of an astronaut training program and an astronaut crew vehicle. Since March 2009, ISRO has had a MoU with the Indian Air Force’s Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IAM) to conduct basic research on human physiological and psychological requirements for human spaceflight crew, and developing IAM’s existing facilities to cater to ISRO’s HSF as a pre-project research and development activity. ISRO has also entered in to agreements with a Bangalore-based third party to initiate the development on spacesuits and a Mysore-based company to develop a space food menu for Indian astronauts.
In mid January of 2014, ISRO announced its intention to flight test its astronaut capsule in a suborbital flight without a crew in the summer of 2014. The flight is designed to test the dynamics of the launch vehicle as well as the effectiveness of the crew capsule, especially its thermal protection system during reentry. ISRO demonstrated its ability to launch and recover a 600-kilogram module in 2007. The capsule was de-orbited and recovered from the Indian Ocean twelve days after launch. In addition to basic microgravity experiments, ISRO was able to test the capsule’s navigation, guidance, and control systems. Known as the Space Recovery Experiment (SRE), the recovered SRE module is now a key exhibit in ISRO’s space museum in the cradle of the Indian Space program, St. Mary Magdalene Church, located within the grounds of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Kerala.
So why has ISRO not made any substantial progress in its human spaceflight program? A fundamental requirement for human spaceflight is a heavy launch system. ISRO does not have one. For human spaceflight, a launch vehicle needs to carry at least 5 tonnes to low Earth orbit. ISRO’s highly reliable and extremely successful PSLV in its most enhanced configuration, PSLV-XL, can lift only about 3.8 tonnes to low Earth orbit. ISRO is resolving this shortcoming in two steps. The first step was completed successfully in January this year and the second is due in a few months time.
On January 5, ISRO launched a 1.8-tonne communication satellite, GSAT-14, to geosttaionary transfer orbit using not the PSLV-XL but the more powerful GSLV-Mk2. Significantly, the third stage of the GSLV-Mk2 used a cryogenic engine that ISRO has been developing for years. Following spectacular failures in the past, January’s launch was an impeccable success, finally confirming ISRO’s competence with cryogenic technology. Sometime around May or June this year, ISRO will conduct a test flight of the GSLV-Mk3. This launch will be a sub orbital flight test of the GSLV-Mk3 with a passive cryogenic upper stage carrying the empty crew capsule. The launch will test the flight coefficient of the GSLV-Mk3 and the re-entry characteristics of the crew capsule. Once that flight is successful, all the pieces will be in place. ISRO will then have a capability to launch 10 tonnes to low Earth orbit.
How India’s HSF program will develop from there is unclear. The timetable will depend on the success of the GSLV-Mk3 flight scheduled for the summer and further test flights as well. In a recent interview, former ISRO chairman Professor UR Rao stated that it will take India about another five years before it is ready to launch its first astronaut from Indian soil.
The next time humans leave Earth, Sharma says, “they should not do so as Americans, Indians, or Chinese, but as people from planet Earth.”
Why should India participate in human spaceflight? Setting aside the question of cost and the ability of a developing nation to fund it, there is a deeper profound reason to do so. Human history is that of a cycle of brutal war and conflict. There is still much now, but relatively less. The nature of our 21st-century global interconnected world ties all of us to each other as never before. The International Space Station (ISS) has been continuously inhabited since 2000. It is only possible because of international collaboration. Apart from the enormous value of the science conducted aboard the ISS, bringing peoples of different nations together here on Earth is probably its greatest legacy. The more we compete and collaborate on the sports ground, in science labs, at arts festivals, in business, environmental management, and space, the less we will do so on the battlefield. International collaboration is essential for our civilization’s grand ambitions in space; India, representing such a large part of it, cannot be absent.
Rakesh Sharma and his backup, Ravish Malhotra, trained to fly aboard a Soviet space station in the spring of 1984. Since Sharma flew, Molhotra was never called up. After a period of commanding an airbase in India, Molhotra left for the private sector, heading up an international aerospace company. Paramaswaren Radhakrishnan and Nagapathi Bhat started their astronaut training in the US to accompany an Indian satellite aboard Space Shuttle Challenger in November 1986. But the catastrophic explosion of Challenger during launch on January 28, 1986, ended their hopes of spaceflight even before the primary/backup selection took place. Both returned and continued to work for ISRO until their retirement and live now live in Thiruvananthapuram (formally Trivanderum) and Bangalore, respectively.
No humans have left Earth orbit since 1972. Speaking in 2013, Sharma pointed to the collaborative opportunities that emerge from national space programs. In the midst of the Cold War, American and Soviet astronauts symbolically shook hands 200 kilometers above the Earth in July 1975 as part of the Apollo Soyuz Test Project. The next time humans leave Earth, Sharma says, “they should not do so as Americans, Indians, or Chinese, but as people from planet Earth.”
Each nation that has launched humans into space started with men and then included women. Two years after the first man, the Soviets put the first woman in space in 1963. The gap for the USA between the launch of its first astronaut and its first woman astronaut was 22 years. The Chinese took nine years. As the world’s largest democracy, would it not be fitting that the first Indian-launched astronaut was a woman?
Gurbir Singh is the publisher of www.astrotalkuk.org and author of the book Yuri Gagarin in London and Manchester.