Scheduled for launch next year, it would have the first Indian astronauts in 40 years and the first ones to go on an Indian spacecraft. Just three countries – the United States, Russia and China – have executed human spaceflight missions till now.
A successful mission would be ISRO’s ultimate demonstration of capability. But Gaganyaan holds a much bigger significance for Indian science in general.
Why India wants to have a stake in Space technologies
More than 600 people from about 50 different countries have travelled to Space till now. However, for a country to execute a human spaceflight mission is still a novelty.
With the renewed interest in going back to the Moon, this time for resource extraction and building a colony, a big rush in human spaceflight missions is expected in the coming decades. Countries are making almost a fresh start this time, using newer materials and technologies.
Becoming an active participant in this new-age Space exploration would ensure access to rights, resources and new technologies. India could then build expertise and opportunities for these technologies’ early adoption. Further, it wants to ensure that it gains access and control over novel technologies that might become critical for economic growth in the future.
Space programmes in the past have also resulted in hundreds of important spin-off technologies, including some breakthrough interventions in the health and medicine sector like Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), heart implants, and advanced water filtration.
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Sustaining a human spaceflight programme would also force the development of a science and technology ecosystem. This would help ensure that India never again ends up at the receiving end of technology denial regimes.
The need to avoid technology denial
India has suffered in the past because of the technology denial policies of other countries, with access to technology often used as a blackmail measure.
For example, in the 1990s, the US denied India cryogenic technology that is critical for powering rockets. It slowed down India’s Space programme by almost two decades. After India conducted its nuclear tests in 1998, even basic parts, like certain kinds of transistors and semiconductors, were denied due to economic sanctions.
At that time, several scientists had impressed upon the government the need for technological independence. It was part of the reason why the Manmohan Singh government had staked everything on the India-US civilian nuclear deal that lifted the freeze on several critical technologies. Although, that did not end the dependence on foreign technologies.
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The covid-19 pandemic came as another shock when it was realised that even basic items like Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits and medicines needed to be procured from abroad. Many of India’s requests were turned down. The insistence on developing vaccines at home was a response to this desperate situation.
Since then, the government has become more active in pushing for indigenisation, capacity building and domestic manufacture of new-age technologies, particularly in strategic sectors like defence, Space, communication and energy.
New science and technology projects announced
In the last couple of years, the government has announced separate missions on green hydrogen, quantum computing, and the latest one last week on artificial intelligence. A national policy on deep-tech is on the anvil.
India has joined some of the biggest international scientific projects like the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Square Kilometer Array, which would involve building several facilities within the country.
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In the interim budget this year, the government announced the setting up of a Rs 1 lakh crore fund to provide long-term low-cost or zero-interest loans for research and development. It also promised to launch a new scheme for promoting deep-tech capabilities in the defence sector.
The repeated requests to foreign companies to set up manufacturing facilities within India for chips and semiconductors, vital for all sorts of electronics, also serve the same purpose. The human spaceflight and advanced Space programmes add another dimension to this cause.
The scientific community, in general, has been welcoming of these initiatives. However, it points out that these are just a small part of the structural reforms needed to significantly improve the quality and quantity of India’s science output.
Scientists say the initiatives may lose steam unless there is sustained attention and engagement and some basic issues in science education and research are addressed. India fares pretty poorly on most research indicators and the available resources, both human and capital, might not be adequate for putting the country on the path to becoming a technology powerhouse.
