Here’s What’s Next on India’s Space Agenda After Chandrayaan-2 Launch Setback

Ask most Indians what they were doing in the wee hours of Saturday, September 7, and they’ll probably tell you they were waiting with bated breath and fingers crossed as India attempted its first moon-landing mission, Chandrayaan-2. Although things didn’t go quite as planned, with the launch module Vikram losing contact with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) just moments before it could complete a soft-landing and when it was only 2.1 kms away from the south pole of the moon’s lunar surface, it still remains an extraordinary effort. It may have been a space mission, but it actually brought people on earth together.

While ISRO is doing its best to figure out what exactly happened with Vikram and re-establish communication channels, this is getting more difficult as the days roll by. Even as the nation eagerly waits to find out where Vikram is, it’s important to remember that the Chandrayaan-2 is only just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to India’s upcoming space agenda.

Next up for ISRO is Gaganyaan, a gargantuan and ambitious attempt to be the fourth country in the world to send humans into space. Scheduled to be launched in 2022, ISRO authorities have already selected three astronauts to be the next Indians to enter space, through an intensive selection procedure. They will be the first Indians to do so after the iconic success of Rakesh Sharma all the way back in 1984 aboard the Russian space mission Soyuz 11.

"There will be absolutely no problem at all. It will have no impact. The satellite missions, as well as the human space flight mission (Gaganyaan), will go very smoothly without any problem. Each mission is of a different type," PG Diwakar, ISRO’s Earth Observations Applications and Disaster Management Programme Office Director told PTI, reassuring all that since the missions had different objectives, they were not likely to be linked.

This Rs 10,000 crore mission is propped up to be a major achievement in India's space journey because ISRO has developed critical technologies to make themselves capable of re-entering the earth, devised a crew escape system, configured crew modules and a thermal protection system, mastered deceleration and flotation systems, and built sub-systems of life support required to survive in space. This will also help ISRO crack reliability in terms of their launch and satellite technology.

ISRO is also embarking on another important mission next year. It will be launching the Aditya-L1, India’s first solar mission, where India will insert a satellite at the Lagrangian point (L1), which is some 1.5 million kilometres away from earth, so it can study the surface of the sun with minimum interruption. This is all while further developing its technology to aim towards interplanetary missions to Mars and Venus. Looks like there’s no other way to go but up from here.

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