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India chases false prestige in space

PRAFUL BIDWAI
Nationalist euphoria is invariably conjured up when India conducts a new scientific experiment or makes bombs, missiles or submarines. India's entry into a "select" high-technology "club" is celebrated - never mind its members' readiness to rain mass death upon innocent civilians.
Take the hype over the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Mars orbiter Mangalyaan. We are told the mission's success or failure isn't relevant. What matters is that it will stir the "national spirit" and inspire youth. No price is too high for this, certainly not the mission's Rs.460-crore cost.
This column argues that the Mars mission is basically irrelevant to space science. It will divert attention from the real challenges facing the space programme, and further distort India's science priorities. Worse, the mission will draw India into dangerous space rivalry with China.
The media declared the mission successful even before Mangalyaan left the earth's gravity-field. But it failed to reach the planned maximum height of 100,000 km after three orbits around earth. ISRO didn't anticipate the glitch, but says it has fixed the problem.
However, the real problems lie ahead: in raising the orbit to 200,000 km, flinging Mangalyaan into inter-planetary space, and placing it in a Martian orbit next September.
As the partially-failed Chadrayaan moon mission showed, ISRO hasn't mastered the technologies involved in such manoeuvres. So the possibility of major snags in the Mangalyaan mission is real.
Mars missions worldwide have a 50 percent-plus failure rate. Even Japan and China failed to place orbiters around Mars. ISRO hurriedly developed Mangalyaan in 15 months, whereas development time in the LIS or Europe is 36-48 months.
However, even if all goes according to plan, Mangalyaan will be in an orbit that's so distant (up to 80,000 km) from Mars that it can observe very little, not even a fraction of what US and European rovers/orbiters have done. The 1,350-kg Mangalyaan carries a tiny 13-kg scientific payload, compared to the latters* 100 kg-plus.
Therefore, Mangalyaan cannot add significantly to what's known about Martian topography or atmosphere. The US's Curiosity - which roved on Mars's surface - couldn't find methane even in the parts-per-million range. It would be a miracle if Mangalyaan, a distant orbiter, finds methane.
Mangalyaan's basic limitations arise from ISRO's 15-years-long failure to develop a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), which can place heavy (2,000 kg-plus) satellites into high orbits.
Instead of operationalising the GSLV and launching a bigger spacecraft with a higher scientific payload, ISRO hurriedly used the much less powerful Polar SLV to launch Mangalyaan in a low-earth orbit. This greatly limited the speed Mangalyaan could acquire - and its abilities.
Former ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair, no less, has criticised the Mars mission as a "useless," "showpiece event" with no "new technology," which is meant to cover up the GSLV programme's failures.
Mangalyaan isn't about science, but about creating a spectacle. ISRO could at best gain from it some familiarity
with deep space communication technology -- necessary because it would take 6 to 42 minutes for radio signals to travel between Mangalyaan and earth.
Even here, ISRO will depend on Nasa - as it did for Chandrayaan-I. It's not clear if ISRO can develop such capability.
In contrast, GSLV development is a higher priority. It will allow ISRO to tap the global $2 billion commercial-satellite launch market.
Another priority is to solve the problems that plagued Chandrayaan-I. Contrary to hype, the mission didn't fulfil its stated goals. It was abandoned in 10 months, instead of the planned two years.
There were early snags with Chandrayaan-I's thermal systems, which caused overheating. More serious problems developed in its navigation system, which crippled its capacity to determine its orientation.
Then, its main sensor and computer packed up, and ground control lost contact with Chandrayaan-I, for reasons which ISRO has failed to investigate or explain. Surely, ISRO should have resolved these issues before launching Mangalyaan.
Spectacular missions like Mangalyaan and recent launches of military and surveillance satellites have raised concerns in China about India's space "ambitions." It would be unwise for India to get into a space and anti-satellite (ASAT) missile race with China.
The danger is real. In 2007, China destroyed an old satellite with ASAT. India has since worked on ASAT, and conducted several test-flights of a Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) interceptor to destroy an "attacker" missile. It's now trying to develop space-based BMD capacity with the Agni-V missile.
India-China rivalry will further militarise space, a process recklessly begun by the US, which unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 to develop space-based BMDs.
India opposed the militarisation of space for decades. It's now silent on it. It's also trying to get BMD technology from the US and Israel.
No less important than telecom satellites is the military angle of ISRO's work. India's space and missile programmes are Siamese twins. ISRO's SLV rockets form the first stage of the Agni missile series. ISRO has also launched many communications and spy satellites for the armed services.
Further expansion in ISRO's clout thus has military implications. With the Department of Atomic Energy' and DRDO, ISRO already soaks up an unconscionable two-thirds of India's science and technology spending.
Diverting yet more funds to ISRO's fanciful projects means starving Indian science of resources and speeding up its decline in global terms.
That decline is stark. For decades, India was the Third World's unquestioned "science superpower." In 1980, it globally held the 8th position in the number of papers (about 15,000) published in peer-reviewed journals, while China with under 1,000 papers was a distant No 15. By 2000, China moved to No 9, with almost twice as many papers as India, now down at No 15.
Since then, China's scientific output has risen 600%, but India's only 30%. India now faces tough competition even from Brazil and Taiwan, not to mention South Korea, Australia and the Netherlands. This demands a massive shift in India's S&T priorities. The Mars mission will impede that shift.
The writer is an eminent Indian columnist.
E-mail: bidwai@bol.net.in