The Indians have landed | The Australian
The Indians have landed
A FLAWLESS 23-day Indian space mission has made a hard lunar landing, planting a flag symbolising the country's growing technical, economic and industrial might.
Chandrayaan-1 blasts off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre near Chennai late last month
It is the first stage in India's ambition to put a man on the moon by 2020, four years before China aimed to become the second nation, after the US in the late 1960s and early '70s, to complete a manned mission.
The probe's mothership Chandrayaan-1 (Sanskrit for mooncraft) remains in orbit where Japanese and Chinese satellites already circle, each vying to boost national pride.
Chandrayaan's success has stoked India's ego.
For Indian Space Research Organisation chairman Madhavan Nair, the mission has proved "very productive and fruitful". "We have also emerged as a low-cost travel agency to space," he says.
It is not just a landmark for the ISRO, which has launched dozens of satellites since it was founded in 1969, but had never before sent an object beyond Earth's orbit. The successful mission catapults India into an elite club: the US, Russia, Japan and China are the only other countries capable of independently reaching the moon (the European Space Agency has also sent a satellite into moon orbit).
It also marks the beginning of what some experts describe as a 21st-century Asian version of the space race between the US and the Soviet Union.
India is competing with China and Japan - Asia's two dominant powers - to send a man to the moon. Even South Korea has an ambitious space program.
"In the 20th century the race to the moon was fought between the erstwhile Cold War adversaries," says Pallava Bagla, author of Destination Moon, a history of ISRO.
"In the 21st century those gladiators have been left behind and the Asian nations, on the upsurge, have decided to take their place.
"Chandrayaan is a scientific mission, but it also has implications for global geopolitics. It's like a coming-out party for India."
The setting for the historic launch was the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, built in 1971 on Sriharikota Island, about 100km north of Chennai, and now surrounded by a bird sanctuary.
The entrance looks much like that of any other Indian government compound: a couple of nonchalant policemen, a dirty tea shop, a few stray dogs. Only the two model rockets hint at the futuristic activity within.
Scientists and engineers clapped and hugged each other when news of the hard landing last Friday was transmitted to mission control along with video pictures of the event. Hundreds of millions more Indians watched live television coverage.
Chandrayaan took several days to travel 385,000km through space before reaching its final position 100km above the moon's surface.
It spent 10 days in orbit before firing the lander to the surface, the Indian flag painted on its casing. The lander is thought to have settled in a crater near the south pole.
The mothership will orbit the moon for two years, using high-resolution remote sensing to compile,
for the first time, a three-dimensional atlas of its surface and analyse its composition. "This is a historic moment for India," Nair says. "What we have started is a remarkable journey ... to unravel the mysteries of the moon."
On board are 11 instruments: five from ISRO and six from foreign agencies, including NASA and the ESA. ISRO is footing the bill for the mission and will have access to all data from the experiments in an unprecedented example of international co-operation in space.
The results could reveal whether the moon contains enough water and helium-3 (a potential energy source rare on Earth) to sustain human life.
"Man has to go to the moon," says T.K. Alex, head of ISRO's satellite centre. "If something happens to Earth, a natural or man-made disaster, we may also need a colony on Mars."
The idea of colonising the moon, let alone Mars, marks a huge strategic shift for India, which has previously focused on cheaper projects with more earthly applications.
India's modern space program was conceived by Jawaharlal Nehru, its first prime minister, as a peaceful way to lift the country out of poverty. ISRO has concentrated on civilian projects with social or industrial benefits, laying the foundations of India's recent information technology boom.
Today India has 16 satellites in orbit, supporting telecommunications, TV broadcasting, earth observation, weather forecasting, remote education and health care.
Because of an early shortage of funds it also boasts the world's most efficient space program, generating income from spacecraft sales and commercial satellite launches.
Now ISRO has far more ambitious and expensive plans. The Government has approved a second unmanned lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, that will land a rover on the moon by 2010-12. ISRO is also planning to put its first Indian astronaut into orbit by 2014-16, depending on when the Government approves the $2.4 billion budget. It has already announced plans to land a man on the moon by 2020.
The public response to the plans appears to reflect the gulf between India's consumer class of 50 million to 100 million people and the rest of the population of 1.1billion. Poorer Indians tend to say the money should be spent on fighting poverty in a country where 800 million people live on less than $3 a day and 47 per cent of children under three are malnourished.
"Will going to the moon help me to stop pedalling this?" asks Pappu Tiwari, 34, who pulls a cycle rickshaw in Delhi, supporting a wife and four children on little more than 2000 rupees ($60) a month.
"To me this space exploration is nothing but a gimmick."
Wealthy and middle-class professionals generally respond that the country lacks good governance, rather than money, and that the space program benefits Indian industry.
"Poverty and hunger will always remain," says Rajeev Kapoor, 48, a salesman from Delhi who supports his wife and two children on about 6000 rupees a month.
"By the time the Government would try to eradicate them completely, the world itself would have vanished."
There is, however, a new impetus for India's lunar ambitions. Mao Zedong initiated China's space program in 1958 with specific military applications in mind and placed it under the purview of the People's Liberation Army.
That head start, combined with a 30-year economic boom, means China is years ahead of India on several fronts, as demonstrated in a series of recent breakthroughs. China put its first astronaut in space in 2003, shot down a satellite and launched a lunar orbiter in 2007, and conducted the first space walk by a Chinese astronaut last month. Beijing plans to land a man on the moon by 2024.
Indian officials insist they are not racing with China, but they have eyed it with suspicion ever since Chinese forces easily prevailed in a brief border war in 1962. Last year India's army chief spoke in public for the first time of his fears about China's military space program and the need for India to accelerate its own.
Other Asian powers have also been spurred into action by China's recent success and by North Korea's claim to have tested a nuclear bomb in 2006. Japan launched a new unmanned lunar orbiter last year, has plans for an unmanned moon lander in 2012-13, and is considering putting a man on the moon by 2025. South Korea accelerated its space program in 2004 by teaming up with Russia to develop a space port and a satellite launch vehicle, due for completion this year.
"There's an element of rivalry, but each country has a mix of motivations," says Bates Gill, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. "It's a combination of national prestige and the spin-offs for technology. The third aspect is the military one. The ultimate high ground: space."
This new space race differs from the Cold War because of the lack of ideology and the international co-operation needed for expensive projects such as Mars missions, experts say. "Space is a global enterprise," says Henry R. Hertzfeld from George Washington University's Space Policy Institute.
Some foresee a golden era of global co-operation. NASA plans to send astronauts to the moon again by 2020 and to build a permanent base there. Russia aims to have one by 2028-32. If all plans come to fruition, the moon is going to be a little crowded.
Nevertheless, most experts agree that space exploration continues to be as much about politics as about science, and a few see trouble over the horizon.
China, India, Japan, Russia and the US publicly oppose the weaponisation of space, but all are developing space technology with potential military applications.
And India is the only country with a lunar program to have signed the 1979 UN Moon Agreement, which bans ownership of lunar resources. None has yet ratified it.
"There is a window over the next 10 to 15 years for countries to think about a resource race in space," Gill says. "It's not too early to think about what these countries might do that could avoid conflict in the future."
The Times and agencies
