The Indian government has announced a long-term plan for its space program. It includes a Venus orbiter, a Mars lander, a crewed space station by 2035 and a crewed lunar landing by 2040. India also plans to launch a crewed spacecraft dubbed the Gaganyaan by 2025.
The scope of New Delhi’s space ambition is breathtaking, to put the matter mildly.
India has been putting itself on the map as a rising space power. The country signed the Artemis Accords in July, placing it firmly in the NASA-led coalition to return astronauts to the moon and eventually land them on Mars. The Chandrayaan-3’s successful landing on the lunar surface, which coincided with the Russian Luna-25’s failure, further illustrated that India means to do great things in space.
The Indian Space Research Organization recently successfully conducted an in-flight abort test of the Gaganyaan spacecraft. The test was a crucial milestone that had to happen if India wanted to be the fourth nation to send its citizens into space on board a spacecraft that it developed.
India has not neglected fostering its own commercial space sector. The International Trade Administration notes that it “has experienced major growth over the last several years.” India has established a regulatory arm called the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center. The International Space Research Organization has a commercial space arm called New Space India Limited. Among the top Indian commercial space companies are Skyroot, Aerospace, Bellatrix Aerospace, Dhruva Space, Agnikul Cosmos and Pixxel.
Why is India going so all-out to become a space leader? One reason has to be soft political power. India’s government likely has noticed that, for the last 50 or so years, the countries that matter have been spacefaring, including the United States, the old Soviet Union and, at least for the time being, the People’s Republic of China.
India also has to notice that large-scale space programs tend to foster economic growth beyond the aerospace sector. The Chase Econometrics Report on NASA R&D spending during the Apollo program proved the relationship between space spending and private investment in a capitalist economy. The effect could be replicated in India.
Space exploration also inspires young people to study careers in the STEM fields, creating a technologically savvy workforce. Apollo provided just such an inspiration and some evidence exists that the current Artemis program is doing the same.
In the book “Rise of the Space Age Millennials,” space business analyst Laura Forczyk presents case studies of young people, none of whom were alive during the Apollo program, who constitute the “Artemis Generation,” a phrase coined by former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, inspired by current space programs, both governmental and commercial. India will surely experience that phenomenon if it can establish a thriving space sector.
At the same time India is developing its own space sector it will participate in the Artemis program. Indian astronauts will likely walk on the moon on one or more Artemis missions before the planned 2040 mission.
Indian and Indian American astronauts have already flown in space. Kalpana Chawla, born in Karnal, India, immigrated to the United States in the 1980s. She became a NASA astronaut in the 1990s and flew two space shuttle missions, the latter of which, Columbia 107, ended in disaster, killing Chawla and her crewmates.
Whether or not India succeeds in landing on the moon with its own spacecraft is not relevant to the fact that the worldwide space sector will look vastly different in 2040 than it does now. Russia is in decline as a space power, largely because of its disastrous war in Ukraine. China, now a rising space power, faces insurmountable demographic and economic problems that some analysts suggest will lead to that country’s collapse.
Japan and the European Space Agency already have thriving space programs that include home-grown launchers. Other countries, such as Israel and the United Arab Emirates, are betting big on space but are turning to the commercial sector to launch things into space. By 2040, other countries are likely to follow.
Most, if not all, space-faring countries in the mid-21st century will be signatories to the Artemis Accords like India. Space flight will no longer be an arena of superpower competition, but something that involves cooperation, science and economic development. This new model will be more sustainable in the long run.
Mark R. Whittington, who writes frequently about space policy, has published a political study of space exploration entitled “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond,” and, most recently, “Why is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. He is published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill, USA Today, the LA Times and the Washington Post, among other venues.