The Indian Space Programme

by Gurbir Singh

  The success of India’s HSF programme will be measured more in terms of political and national prestige than results in science or technology. The HSF programme will require a profound shift in ISRO’s capability and capacity, but success will not translate into meaningful national economic benefits for which ISRO was established. Further, the high cost of HSF may well delay or prevent its other objectives. Kasturirangan, who became ISRO chairman in 1994, understood the scale of the challenges inherent in the HSF programme and noted “People give you a wrong impression about the type of resources needed for human space mission” and the “returns will never be big.”[813] Ten years ago, India committed to a desire for HSF but ISRO still has no formal government approval to proceed. In its absence, ISRO is undertaking work on some aspects of HSF in the background.

  Figure 14‑9 Proposed Crew Vehicle (left), Crew Module Attached to the Service Module (centre) and the Emergency Capsule Abort System (right). Credit ISRO

  The story of Indian astronauts is a short one. Rakesh Sharma continues to speak and write about his experience and the future for India’s HSF programme. A recent announcement indicated that Bollywood film about his experiences is underway.[814] Kalpana Chawla, was killed when Space Shuttle Colombia disintegrated during re-entry over Texas on 1 February 2003. Announcements about a film about her career have also been published but here former husband, Jean-Pierre Harrison has insisted in the past that he does not support the project.[815].

  Ravish Malhotra retired from his work in the private sector and is not actively involved in any space projects. P. Radhakrishnan continues to live in Kerala where he frequently participates in the media as a science communicator in both his native Malayalam and English. N.C. Bhat retired in 2011 from ISRO but continues to share his experience in mechanical design as a consultant. Since 2015, he has been involved with Team Indus in support of their lander and rover mission to the Moon. Sunita Williams completed two spaceflights to the ISS and clocked up a total of over 300 days in space and over 50 hours of spacewalk. She is now part of a team of astronauts preparing to fly the next generation of US’s commercially built human-rated spacecraft from Boeing CST-100 and Space-X Dragon.

  Each national government that has launched humans into space started with men and then included women. The Soviets put the first woman in space in 1963, two years after the first man. The gap between the first male astronaut and its first female astronaut for the US was 22 years. The Chinese took just nine years. In early 2016, the IAF Chief Arun Raha announced that women in the IAF could qualify as fighter pilots. Perhaps, India’s first man in space could be a woman.

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  Chapter Fifteen

  Moon, Mars and Science

  I n October 2008, ISRO launched Chandrayaan-1ndia’s first mission beyond Earth orbit, marking a dramatic shift from its founding principles. When the US and USSR governments were making unprecedented financial and political commitments to their space programmes for human spaceflight, science and the exploration of the solar system, Vikram Sarabhai had stated in 1966 “in India the immediate goal of our space research is modest. We do not expect to send a man to the Moon or put white, pink or black elephants into orbit around the Earth.”[816] He had ruled India out of competing with “economically advanced nations in the exploration of the Moon or the planets or manned space-flight” and insisted that India focused only on the “application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society”. Four decades later, a spacecraft made in and launched from India arrived in lunar orbit. Was this a break from the founding principles or a “course correction” to reflect the ambitions of a new generation in a new century?

  India’s space programme was intended from the outset to help improve the quality of life of ordinary Indians. To achieve societal development, Sarabhai and others had not only to build the technological infrastructure from scratch but also to embark on crystallising in the fabric of Indian society the scientific temper that Nehru had imbued in the Indian Constitution. Sarabhai was a scientist and understood the transformative power of science and technology to change society. The scale of the benefit of the space programme is not always immediately obvious or tangible. Changing the fabric of society to permeate scientific temper is a complex and slow process.

  Scientifically literate populations, industrial centres of excellence, R&D laboratories and educational institutions are some of the foundations of modern developed societies. Momentous and technologically stunning missions of exploration, like Sputnik or Apollo, inspire the younger generations to take up careers in science and engineering. Of all the scientific fields (i.e., astronomy, physics, genetics, geophysics or organic chemistry), it is space science that tends to hold the most fascination for young students contemplating a future career in science and technology. A large-scale space programme can also secure political and financial commitment because of its capacity to deliver national prestige, security, as well as economic development. An Indian spacecraft in orbit around the Moon could be a powerful catalyst to inspire a new generation of scientists and engineers to guide India through the next cycle of national development.

  Destination Moon

  By the turn of the millennium, ISRO had established a reliable track-record of over a decade in launching and operating satellites in Earth orbit. It operated one of the most sophisticated national constellations of remote sensing and communication satellites in the world. It had a launch vehicle (PSLV) with a proven track record and had successfully launched its next generation of launch vehicle GSLV-D1. Sarabhai’s original goals for India’s space programme had been largely met. ISRO had matured as an organisation and was optimistic in its technical competence. It was time for a new generation of ISRO leaders to contemplate new ambitious goals based on its new-found confidence.

  India’s mission to the Moon emerged from a paper presented in 1999 under the guidance of the then ISRO chairman K. Kasturirangan. Even though going to the Moon offered no obvious national development outcomes, it was a mission beyond Earth orbit, uncharted territory for ISRO. Operating a satellite around the Moon would be just like operating any other satellite in orbit; only that it would be further away. While ISRO could use much of the existing infrastructure, it would still need to build new deep space communication infrastructure and develop the navigation and guidance systems required for a journey from the Indian coastline to the lunar orbit.

  Once initial calculations confirmed that a PSLV could be used for a mission to the nearest celestial body, planning for such a mission began. Getting government approval was, however, not a trivial process. In March 1998, a new nationalist government by Bharatiya Janata Party had come to power, and a couple of months later, India conducted a second series of nuclear tests, known as Pokhran-2. International sanctions followed as they had done following Pokhran-1 nuclear tests in May 1974. For the Indian government, an Indian mission to the Moon would not only help recover national prestige but announce India’s arrival as a space power on the international stage.[817] This was almost a repeat of what the US and USSR governments had done during the Cold War in pursuit of national reputation. Political and financial commitment from the Indian government for space projects that would raise the national profile on an international stage was not difficult in principle to acquire. It did however involve a long and involved process. Kasturirangan recalls “we had to go through an elaborate process of consultation and justification with the scientific community, academics, the political system, and the public media before this mission was given the go-ahead.”[818] It took over four years to convince the government that there was value to a purely scientific mission to the Moon.[819]

  Figure 15‑1 Steps Leading up to India’s First Moon Mission. Credit K. Kasturirangan

  On 15 August 2003, the Prime Minister of India announced to the world India’s intention to launch a mission to the Moon, Chandrayaan-1. Though publicly unstated, there was probably another motivation behind India’s announcement. On 23
January 2003, China had announced its plan for a mission to the Moon.[820] In September 2003, the ESA’s SMART-1 arrived in lunar orbit, and two months later, in October 2003, China achieved spectacular success with its first orbital HSF mission. India would have known about China’s imminent HSF plans. In the absence of an Indian mission to the Moon, India risked its space programme being perceived internationally as immature and second to that of China. The Indian space programme needed to set itself a bold new objective. ISRO was already familiar with designing, building, launching and operating satellites in Earth orbit. If India could get to the Moon before China, then it would be the fifth space agency to do so, after the USSR (1959), US (1959), Japan (1990) and ESA (2003).[821]

  Kasturirangan had originally planned for a single mission to the Moon called Somayaan, but the Prime Minister was of the view that if ISRO was to engage in an exploration of the solar system, it should have a longer-term vision. The mission should not be a one-off, but a series, and should include other planets and not just the Moon. Based on advice from Sanskrit scholars, the Prime Minister also changed the name of the mission from Somayaan to Chandrayaan (in Sanskrit, chandra = Moon and yaan = vehicle), and as first of a series, it became Chandrayaan-1.

  Kasturirangan’s proposal for a Moon mission was first discussed by the Indian Academy of Science and was later supported by other scientific organisations, including the Astronautical Society of India. The Lunar Mission Study Task Force was established to undertake a feasibility study and produce a report. This report was then peer-reviewed by about 100 scientists from a variety of disciplines, and it provided four key recommendations that framed the primary goals of the Moon mission:[822]

  The Indian Moon Mission assumes significance in the context of the international scientific community considering several exciting missions in planetary exploration in the new millennium.

  ISRO has the necessary expertise to develop and launch the Moon Mission with imaginative features, and it would be different from the past missions. Therefore, ISRO should go ahead with the project approval and implementation.

  Apart from technological and scientific gains, it would provide the needed thrust to basic science and engineering research in the country. The project would help the return of young talent to the arena of fundamental research.

  The academia, in particular, university scientists, would find participation in such a project intellectually rewarding. In this context, the scientific objectives would need further refinement to include innovative ideas from a broader scientific community through Announcement of Opportunity, etc.

  The reference to academia and Announcement of Opportunities in the final recommendation would subsequently transform the mission into an international, award-winning, and most scientifically successful mission that ISRO had ever initiated.[823]

  Building Chandrayaan-1

  Geopolitics and national prestige motivated the mission, but Chandrayaan-1’s primary objectives were scientific. A detailed configuration of the spacecraft and launcher evolved over time. Eventually, it was concluded that Chandrayaan-1 would be a 1.5 m cuboid with a mass of 440 kg (524 kg with propellant) powered by a solar panel and lithium-ion batteries for use during a solar eclipse and designed to operate for two years. It would be launched by a PSLV and placed in a 100-km circular polar orbit around the Moon. It would use S-band uplink for remote command, S-band downlink for telemetry and X-band for data transmission from the Moon to Earth. Based on the tried and tested IRS series design (also used for Kalpana-1 and MetSat-1), the single solar array would be canted at 30o to provide 750 W peak power. The spacecraft would be fitted with three separate Solid State Recorders (SSR). SSR1 with a capacity of 32 GB to store scientific data, SSR2 with a capacity of 8 GB for science and spacecraft telemetry data and SSR3 with a capacity of 10 GB exclusively for science data gathered by the one specific instrument, Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument.

  The payload that actually flew was significantly revised twice from that initially planned. After accommodating all ISRO’s six instruments, a calculation determined that an additional 10 kg mass and 10 W power consumption were still available. ISRO issued an Announcement of Opportunity, and the unexpected response to this prompted the first design change. The Announcement of Opportunity was an invitation to scientists, engineers or institutions beyond ISRO (national and international) to make use of this excess available capacity. It received an unexpectedly large international response. Two instruments proposed by NASA M3 and Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (Mini-SAR), looked promising but together they exceeded the 10-kg allowance.

  To accommodate both, ISRO redesigned the spacecraft and increased the available capacity from 10 kg to 25 kg. Now, instead of two additional instruments, ISRO could accommodate even more. Eventually, six instruments were incorporated from international partners. M3 from NASA; Mini-SAR also from the US and UK; Near-Infrared Spectrometer (SIR-2) from ESA; Sub keV Atom Reflecting Analyser (SARA) also from ESA, India, Japan and Sweden; Radiation Dose Monitor (RADOM) from the Bulgarian Space Science Institute; and Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS), a collaboration funded by ESA and produced by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and University of Wales, UK.

  Figure 15‑2 Chandrayaan-1 and Its Science Payload. Credit Adapted from ISRO

  The second significant design change came when a Moon Impact Probe (MIP) was added. The MIP was designed to detach from Chandrayaan-1 and make an impact on the surface of the Moon delivering the Indian Tricolour to Earth’s nearest neighbour. Abdul Kalam, the then President of India and a highly respected former ISRO engineer who had helped develop India’s first satellite launcher SLV-3, had advocated the MIP. His elevated political position ensured his proposal was taken seriously. Further, the delivery of the Indian flag to the surface of the Moon was a source of national pride and would attract additional government commitment. The MIP, at 35 kg, called for a major project redesign, including optimising subsystems shared by payloads, such as power and data storage, and reducing built-in redundancies. The number of star sensors was reduced from four to two; the twelve Reaction Control Systems were reduced to eight and two tanks of 35 litres capacity each used to pressurise fuel were replaced with one of 67 litres capacity. To minimise cost overrun and reduce the delay these major redesigns caused, ISRO chose to dispense with the traditional practice of building three models (structural, engineering and flight) and instead went straight to building a single flight model.[824]

  The Moon mission also required building additional ground infrastructure. The Moon at 384,400 km was more than ten times farther than the most distant assets ISRO operated at the time, the satellites in GSO at 36,000 km. Getting a spacecraft to the Moon, entering precise lunar orbit and then operating the spacecraft from Earth were a fresh set of challenges for ISRO. Additional infrastructure required to support Chandrayaan-1 included a new deep space communication facility, a Mission Operations Complex in Bangalore and an Indian Space Science Data Centre to house the large and complex data-set Chandrayaan-1 would return.[825] Multiple fibre optic communication links (2 × 2 Mbps, 14 Mbps and 512 Mbps) were established between the Mission Operations Complex and the Data Centre to support redundancy and real-time backup. ISRO also initiated a programme to build large steerable antennae to meet Chandrayaan-1’s communication requirements. An 18-m dish was completed in 2006 and a 32-m antenna by the end of 2007. Initially, the launch of Chandrayaan-1 was scheduled for 9 April 2008. To meet the schedule, ISRO purchased the 18-m antenna from Germany. This antenna alone could have provided the communication link for Chandrayaan-1.[826] However, a 32-m antenna was built jointly by Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) in Hyderabad, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai, various ISRO labs and private Indian industries. Since then, another 11-m antenna has also been added. All three are located at ISRO’s Byalalu site, 40 km from Bangalore. ISRO’s ISTRAC facility in Bangalore operates all antennae in Byalalu and elsewhere.

  The collection of
antennae contributed to building IDSN. To ensure international interoperability, IDSN complies with the international standards of CCSDS.[827] The IDSN would be essential to support future ISRO science missions, such as Astrosat, Aditya-L1 and missions to Mars, which at the time were years away. From the outset, the 32-m antenna was built and operated to international standards for communication with spacecraft from other nations in deep space. Communication antennae around the world allow nations to communicate with their spacecraft, even when they are not in the sky over them. These international collaborative events have either been mutual, where no money changed hands or subject to a formal commercial arrangement. The IDSN alone, including the 18-m and 32-m antennae, cost Rs.100 crore ($15 million). The total cost of Chandrayaan-1 including the IDSN, was Rs.386 crore (about $60 million).[828] A WikiLeaks document reveals the US’s estimate that the mission cost “USD 89 million (Rs. 514 crore) not including partner country instruments.”[829] ISRO is able to recoup some of this investment through commercial use of its 32-m antenna by international agencies.

  Journey to the Moon

  Of the total 126 spacecraft that have gone from the Earth to the Moon by mid-2016, most have used the Lunar Transfer Trajectory.[830] While US’s Saturn 5 could deliver 35,000 kg to the lunar orbit, Chandrayaan-1was launched by a PSLV with a capacity to deliver only 675 kg. PSLV’s limited power restricted Chandrayaan-1’s maximum science payload to 105 kg and defined the route it would take from the Earth to the Moon. The most fuel-efficient approach involves first an Earth orbit immediately after launch and then gradually stretching that orbit to a highly elliptical one that eventually spans the distance of the Moon. When close enough to be within the gravitational influence of the Moon, the spacecraft would fire its engine and be captured in a lunar orbit.