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Hastening Gaganyaan programme can help ISRO assemble Bharatiya Antariksha Station by 2035
On August 23, 2023, after ISRO’s Chandrayaan 3 mission executed a controlled, soft landing on the lunar surface , Director of UR Rao Satellite Centre, M Sankaran said, “The amount of effort is tremendous, that is what ISRO is all about, that is what our organisation has taught us to do. Now today, this success has put (on) us even more higher responsibilities as the honourable Prime Minister was telling. Because we have set the bar now so high, nothing, nothing less spectacular than this is going to be inspiring for us in the future.” Sankaran was anticipating in some way just how buoyed India’s space agency would be by the success of the Chandrayaan 3 mission. Sankaran went on to say, “As the honourable Prime Minister mentioned, we will be now looking at putting the man in space, putting a spacecraft around Venus, and landing a craft in Mars. Work on all these activities are going on for few years. This success today, will inspire us, and will spur us to take those efforts even more strongly, so that we will make our country proud, again and again and again.” While ISRO has been working on the Shukrayaan orbiter to Venus, and a follow-up Mangalyaan mission, as well as the ambitious Gaganyaan programme to lift humans into Earth orbit using hardware designed and produced in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has now directed the space agency to achieve even more ambitious goals . ISRO has been tasked with assembling a space station in Earth orbit by 2035, and go on to land an Indian on the surface of the Moon by 2040. If anyone can achieve the seemingly impossible, it is ISRO During an interaction with students at NIT Tiruchirappalli , Project Director of Chandrayan 3 at ISRO, P Veeramuthuvel was asked when we (Indians) are going to step on Moon. Veeramuthuvel responded, “I cannot tell the timeline, but definitely you know ISRO is a very results oriented organisation. Everyone works with a passion. I am sure that we will come up with the plans, which I cannot tell now. But, we are working on it.” The interaction occurred before the new directions to the space agency by the Prime Minister. ISRO has repeatedly made it clear that they will achieve what they set out to do, learning from any of the failures along the way. Since its inception on August 15, 2015, ISRO has slowly and steadily building up the local capabilities required for building and launching satellites, with close association with private industry partners. These included plants to produce the rocket fuels for the fleet, and ISROs rockets use both solid and liquid propellants. ISRO has also developed a cryogenic stage for its rockets, which requires specialised equipment. ISRO had to set up testing facilities for the rocket engines, as well as the assembly buildings and gantries required for pre-launch procedures. All of this could not have been achieved without sourcing from the private sector, and the industries in India have to be recognised here for even something seemingly small and unimportant as aerospace grade nuts and bolts. There are around 500 suppliers of components for ISRO missions in India. Most of these are small and medium industries. The various unpressurised crew module mockups for the Gaganyaan programme have been sourced from local industries. ISRO also has technology transfer plans, to source more of its rockets from the private sector. However, there is no single private entity in India that can provide the end-to-end services in the space domain, with capabilities comparable to ISRO. In the US for example, SpaceX stepped up to provide the capabilities to ferry humans to Earth orbit, when NASA itself lacked such capabilities after the retirement of the Space Shuttles in 2011. The private sector will have a major role to play in India’s space aspirations There is no company comparable to SpaceX in India yet, but a number of enterprising startups are making every effort. These companies have sprung up to serve the burgeoning demand of the microsatellite and nanosatellite market. Instead of deploying large, massive satellites, space agencies, research institutions and private companies are discovering the many benefits of using large constellations of small satellites. This has created a demand for smaller launch vehicles to deploy small satellites. Also Read | Private industry welcomes new goals set for ISRO by Prime Minister Skyroot Aerospace, Dhruva Space and Agnikul Cosmos are all developing launch vehicles for catering to the small satellite market. These companies are being mentored by ISRO, and provided with the facilities required to develop, test and launch their rockets. The companies themselves belong to a new generation of aerospace companies that are more agile and responsive to market demands. They are using a number of innovative new technologies, including environmentally friendly rocket fuels, and additive manufacturing techniques that reduce the complexity of rocket engines. Among all the private aerospace companies, Larsen & Toubro, as well as Godrej Aerospace are the closest in capabilities when it comes to producing the large launch vehicles with heavy lift capabilities necessary for the ambitious future missions to build a space station, and enable crewed missions to the lunar surface. However, all of these companies require a policy environment that will allow them to realise the now lofty ambitions that India has in the space domain. The policy environment in India is conducive for accelerated growth in the space sector The government is doing everything it can to create an environment where an Indian SpaceX can spring up. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has realised long ago that the private sector has a major role to play in the future aspirations of India in the space domain, and invited stakeholders to form a common platform to plan for the future, resulting in the formation of The Indian Space Association (ISPA) in October 2021. Another potential hurdle for space activities was having to run around to the various government offices and departments to get the clearings necessary. In fact, there was a point when Indian companies could not use ISRO to launch their satellites, as there was no pathway available for such a proposal, although foreign customers could take advantage of the low-cost access to space provided by ISRO’s fleet. In June 2020, the National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre or In-SPACE was launched in June 2022 to act as a single window clearing agency for space activities. The biggest game changer however, was the carefully considered Space Policy that the Government of India ushered in, in 2023 . The space reforms cemented the role that the private sector has to play in making India self-reliant in the space sector. The reason why ISRO can offer such a low-cost, democratic access to space is that it not only works with suppliers in India, but procures the materials or components at competitive prices when necessary, from international suppliers as well. We cannot possibly make everything in India In a workshop conducted by the Department of Space on India achieving self-reliance in the space sector, ISRO chairman S Somanath suggested an interpretation of aatmanirbharta that did not involve India producing absolutely everything it required locally. The reason why ISRO has the capabilities of rapidly assembling low cost satellites for its missions is because of the ability to source superior materials at competitive prices from the international market, as well as the access to high-quality electronics and chips. S Somanath said, “In a world that is getting more connected and inclusive, we cannot take such a stand that we are going to do everything ourselves. Such a society cannot grow, because the growth happens by participating with so many other people. This has been the trademark of ISRO as well, when we started the whole programme of space, we were not equipped to do it. We took help and support from so many people across the world, including the advanced nations, to initiate the technology development in this country.” A number of private industry partners are supplying ISRO with mockups of crew modules of the same dimesions and specifications as the crew module that ISRO will use for the Gaganyaan programme. These crew modules that ISRO is using for the exhaustive series of tests to ensure the safety of its astronauts are unpressurised. For the actual missions, ISRO will have to use pressurised crew modules, and S Somanath has indicated to The Hindu that these pressurised crew modules will have to be procured from outside India , as we simply lack the domestic capabilties to produce them at this point in time. How to build a space station All the space stations so far follow roughly the same basic design, which India will have to follow for setting up the Bharatiya Antariksha Station. This requires heavy lift rockets to ferry up modules, or the various elements that come together to make up a space station. These modules can be a command and control module, a habitation module, a service module that contains the propulsion systems and life support systems, and one or more laboratory modules for hosting microgravity experiments. Once the modules are deployed in space, they will have to be assembled and configured. This was the approach used on the International Space Station, as well as the Tiangong Space Station operated by China. To do this, ISRO will have to develop the capabilities of making two orbital assets meeting each other at the precise orientation, time and location of its choosing. These are capabilities that ISRO lacks at this point in time, but is planning to demonstrate with the Space Docking Experiment (SPADEX) mission in the future. Once the orbital platform has been configured and assembled, there is the business of rotating the crews and delivering supplies as well as scientific experiments. ISRO is not yet developing a cargo supply craft, which it will have to get around to, and which will probably be a modified version of the Gaganyaan crew module. Gaganyaan missions will be required to ferry Indian astronauts to the space station, who will required to be supported by regular resupply missions. There will be a requirement for a crewed flight and a cargo flight to the Bharatiya Antariksha Station roughly twice a year. The Gaganyaan Programme is the ladder necessary for ISRO to meet its new ambitious goals This brings us back to the Gaganyaan programme. The new directions for ISRO were recieved during a briefing to the Prime Minister about the progress on the Gaganyaan programme. ISRO is on the verge of ushering a new era in space exploration with the launch of the first demonstration flight for the Gaganyaan programme, TV-D1, which will be a pad abort test to check that the Crew Escape System (CES) can safely jettison the astronauts in case the rocket veers off course or is on the verge of exploding. The flight is scheduled for October 21, 2023 . Also Read | IAF video shows glimpses of astronaut designates for ISRO’s Gaganyaan programme So far, the Gaganyaan programme was itself considered as an ambitious end goal, with India finally developing the capabilities for taxiing humans to Earth orbit, and doing so on locally produced hardware. But now, with the new directions from the Prime Minister, the ambitious Gaganyaan programme has become a stepping stone to even more ambitious missions, that will allow India to finally attain parity with the major spacefaring nations around the world. Despite all its achievements, there are a number of capabilities that ISRO is lacking in, including reusable launch vehicles that can potentially further bring down the cost of missions, rendezvousing in space, returning samples to the Earth from extraterrestrial surfaces and operating a rover on the surface of another planet. The Gaganyaan programme, along with planetary science missions that ISRO is planning with other space agencies, will help ISRO develop these capabilities . All of these capabilities in turn, will be absolutely required for assembling the Bharatiya Antariksha Station and realising a crewed mission to the surface of the Moon.
Publish Date : 2023-10-18 13:13:00
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