Bengaluru: India’s space agency is preparing to launch a rocket, possibly on Friday, which will attempt to land a rover on the moon. This mission will mark India’s arrival as a power in space exploration and the new frontier of space commerce.
So far, only the United States, the former Soviet Union, and China have achieved successful lunar landings. A previous attempt by a Japanese start-up earlier this year ended in failure with the lander crashing.
The Chandrayaan-3, built on a budget of just under $75 million, is scheduled to blast off from India’s main spaceport in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh at 2:35 p.m. local time (0905 GMT).
If all goes according to plan, a 43.5-meter (143 ft) LVM3 launch rocket will propel the spacecraft into an elliptical Earth orbit before it heads towards the moon for a planned landing around August 23.
This launch by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is the country’s first major mission since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government announced policies to encourage investment in private space launches and related satellite-based businesses.
The Indian government aims to increase its space companies’ share of the global launch market by fivefold within the next decade, according to officials. Currently, India holds a 2% share of the global launch market by revenue in 2020.
Chandrayaan, which means “moon vehicle” in Sanskrit, includes a 2m tall lander designed to deploy a rover near the lunar south pole. The rover is expected to remain operational for two weeks, conducting a series of experiments.
However, experts believe that the launch also serves another purpose: signaling that India is open for business in the rapidly growing private-sector space race.
“A successful mission will enhance India’s global reputation and bring indirect benefits to the commercial aspect of the industry,” said Ajey Lele, a consultant at New Delhi’s Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.
In ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2 mission in 2020, an orbiter was successfully deployed, but the lander and rover were destroyed in a crash near the location where the Chandrayan-3 will attempt to land.
Since India opened its doors to private launches in 2020, the number of space startups has more than doubled. Last year, Skyroot Aerospace, whose investors include Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, launched India’s first privately built rocket.
During his visit to the United States last month, Prime Minister Modi and President Joe Biden pledged to deepen collaboration in space.
Voyager Space, a Denver-based company with a NASA contract to develop the planned Starlab space station, recently announced that it signed a memorandum of understanding with ISRO to use Indian rockets. The company also expressed interest in collaborating with Indian space start-ups.
“India sees space as a strategic asset, and it aims to become one of the leading players in outer space,” said Carla Filotico, managing director at consultancy SpaceTec Partners. “This could be India’s opportunity to be one of the pioneers in this industry.”
(Reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Kevin Krolicki and Jamie Freed)