When you think of space faring nations India probably isn’t one of the first to come to mind but they’re fast becoming one of the big players in terms of capability. Their space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), began back in 1975 and has primarily focused on developing both launch and satellite capabilities. They made headlines back in 2008 with Chandrayaan-1 which was their first satellite to visit another celestial body. Every year since then has seen India launch multiple satellites every year, with the vast majority of them blasting to orbit aboard their very own Satellite Launch Vehicle brand of rockets. Last week saw them tick off another incredible milestone: their first interplanetary mission arriving successfully at its destination.
The Mars Orbiter Mission (or Mangalyaan) is a comparatively small craft, weighing in at just on 500 kgs with only 15kg of that being dedicated to the various payloads it’s carrying. It’s primarily a technology demonstration mission, designed to provide a shakedown for the various systems required to maintain an interplanetary mission. Thus the payload of the mission is relatively simple, consisting of some atmospheric and particle sensors along with your standard imaging affair, although it does have the rather interesting capability of being able to radically change its orbit over time. Just the fact that India has joined the rather exclusive club of nations that have sent craft to Mars (3 total, now) would be noteworthy in of itself but there’s one more thing that makes MOM noteworthy.
The cost.
A typical Mars mission usually costs on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars, usually tickling the billion dollar mark when all things are considered. The Phoenix Lander, for instance, cost about $386 million and was considered to be quite cheap as it reused a lot of technology from other projects. MOM however was done for a total budget of $74 million including launch costs making it the cheapest interplanetary mission by any nation to date. A lot of this comes down to the simplicity of the mission however a big part of it is the fact that their launch vehicle costs around $19 million per launch, a cost that rivals even that of SpaceX’s Falcon launch system. If ISRO is able to keep their costs at this level there’s every chance that other nations will look to them to provide launch capabilities like this in the future.
Even though MOM is a simple craft it has the capability to provide extremely useful data like its predecessor Chandrayaan-1 did. The instruments might be few in number but the data they provide will function as a validation point for all the missions that have come before it, ensuring that the models we’ve developed for Mars are still valid. Having another set of eyes on Mars means that we’ll be able to catch many more of the geological phenomenon in action that we’ve seen in the past which will provide us even more insight into how its environment is changing, even today.
It always amazes me to see how rapidly space capability is being developed not only by private industry but also nation states. Exploring space is an incredibly expensive affair, one that seemingly doesn’t contribute to the nation’s economy directly, but the benefits always outstrip any cost that follows them. For India the ROI is going to be amazing as they’ve built a capability that took other nations decades and several billion dollars to achieve. I’m very excited to see what they accomplish next and whether or not they can continue the tradition of doing it far cheaper than anyone else.
