Tag: ISRO

  • Delhi is not far

    [Originally written when I moved to blot.im, here.]

    India setup the headquarters for its space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Bengaluru to stay far away from political influence or interference. Or so, the legend goes. But it’s success has got it Delhi’s attention.

    The political interference began with Delhi giving ISRO a target of 2022 for flying an Indian into low earth orbit in an Indian vehicle. The opening up of the space sector and the creation of various institutions to regulate the sector have still not stabilized. The lack of a Space Act is a big part of this lack of stability.

    In a recent podcast episode of The Seen and the Unseen, K P Krishnan suggests that the government is shaking up institutions that it sees as being captured by elites. I wonder if it is doing the same to ISRO and the space sector. If so, this is a welcome move.I think the engineering and the science focus of the space sector may save it more than anything else.

    The government is the only institution that can invest in space and wait patiently (as it has for the past seventy years) as it develops. Even with the opening up of the space sector, the sector will need continued patronage of the government to grow. The private sector can, at best, make more efficient use of the capital that the government deploys for developing new technologies and applies it in various fields.

  • Chandrayaan 3 landed successfully

    I watched the landing of Chandrayaan 3 at home with my wife and children. I also celebrated with them.

    Once completed, we had a Zoom call with members of Chalchitra Talks where we spoke for half an hour about the landing and I answered questions regarding the mission to the best of my ability.

    The lack of images since the landing has been frustrating. There were many conspiracy theories to try and explain the lack of images. There was speculation that the images were kept on hold for the Prime Minister to release them. This turned out to be unfounded. The images have still not been released!

    During an interaction with the Malayalam media (translated by me from Malayalam on Twitter and Mastodon), it became clear that this is simply because of poor camera angles and direction of sunlight at the landing site!

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  • India’s Space Roadmap 2047 – Gaganyaan

    Today we take a look at the third layer of the Roadmap – Gaganyaan, India’s Human Spaceflight programme.

    ISRO has posted several updates related to various hardware testing of the Gaganyaan components.

    The Gaganyaan missions will initially be unmanned, followed by missions to Low Earth Orbit with the eventual goal of establishing an Indian Space Station.

    The Artemis Accords will pave the way for human missions to the Moon after gaining experience in Low Earth Orbit.

    Technologies for planetary habitation is somewhere in the realm between science fiction and early technology demonstration of these technologies on analog stations on Earth.

    It will require the development of a heavy launcher to send larger structures to Low Earth orbit to build the Indian Space Station and to reduce the time needed (from more than a month to a few days) to send a spacecraft to the Moon. ISRO has a heavy launcher plan on the drawing boards at this stage.

    It will also need to develop a module (similar to the Russian Progress or SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon) that could carry payload to the Indian Space Station or even the Artemis Gateway.

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  • India’s Roadmap to Space 2047 – Spacecraft Innovation and Exploration

    I wrote about India’s Roadmap to Space 2047 in an earlier blog post. I wanted to share it without any comments at first, but then I decided to add my thoughts.

    The term “flexible COMSAT” refers to a type of satellite that can change its coverage, bandwidth, and frequency. This technology is being developed by ISRO, as mentioned in a PTI story published on the NDTV website.

    The term “full EPS satellite” is a reference to a type of satellite that uses only electric propulsion systems (EPS). The EPS system was first flown on the South Asia Satellite or GSAT-9, launched in 2017. The note says that this would reduce the mass of satellite from approximately 6 ton to 4 ton for the same capability.

    Quantum and Optical COMSATs are in various stages of development. Urbasi Sinha and her team in QuIC lab, Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru and an ISRO team at the Space Applications Center (SAC) are working on the building blocks of quantum satellites. The first optical communication payload was carried on the GSAT-29 mission.

    The Indian Space Station based R&D and economic activity is at least a decade into the future. Vellon Space, an Indian startup has been talking about space-age medicine and pharmaceutical manufacturing in space.

    Inter-planetary networks hold immense potential for the future of humanity! Imagine a world where communication seamlessly spans across celestial bodies, connecting Earth with other planets. The vision of becoming a multi-planet species becomes more tangible as these networks evolve. It all starts with the Earth-Moon system, but the possibilities for expansion are limitless. With initiatives like Artemis and the International Lunar Research Station, we are paving the way for a future where inter-planetary communication becomes a reality!

    ISRO may not focus as much on Earth observation satellites because there are many Indian space companies (Pixxel, SatSure, Dhruva etc.) working on remote sensing capabilities. They may continue with Earth observation missions until the startups can offer similar levels of data. On the other hand, there are fewer startups in the field of communications satellites technologies. The only one that comes to mind is Astrome among the NewSpace companies.

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  • India’s Space Road Map up to 2047

    Reddit user u/Blazing_Phoenix_100 shared this screenshot of India’s space road map shared at the G20 summit. I plan on using this chart not to point out times where ISRO has fell behind this timeline. They have done that plenty of times but to understand the general direction they are headed in.

    In the absence of an official roadmap on the ISRO website, this becomes an important indicator of priorities until an official roadmap appears.

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  • Role of ISRO in the future?

    Fortune India did an interview with Chairman, ISRO Dr. S. Somanath. This was one of the exchanges in the interview.

    Commercial human space travel is something which private players in some countries are offering. Can ISRO do this?

    We can, but it is not our job. It is the job of the industry. ISRO is a national agency. ISRO can develop the technology. But the practice of government funding ISRO to develop technology is going to stop. If a technology is needed, it will be developed by ISRO and industry through government-industry funding. So, now, the industry will have to put money into technology development. They have to do some R&D and develop technology.

    This is an interesting comment and perhaps provides an insight into how ISRO thinks of its evolving role in the new space policy regime in India post-2019.

    NSIL, the Department of Space’s commercial arm signaled the intention to move to a demand-driven model in the space sector. As an example, GSAT-24 was India’s first demand-driven satellite that NSIL/ISRO built for Tata Play (DTH service provider).

    If you read through the whole interview, you can see the lengths to which Somanath goes to protect ISRO’s role while trying to push the idea that industry must lead in the future. This is a new tension for ISRO to hold. I don’t think there is enough clarity on how this will happen for him to communicate the message well.

  • India’s Space Policy – Sowing Now to Reap Later

    Note from the Author: I wrote this piece in March 2022. I did not get around to publishing it anywhere. Hence, posting it here. Some of the information mentioned here is outdated.

    Introduction

    India has pursued a space program since the 1960s with the intention of benefitting its people for the past sixty years. For this period, the program was dominated by a single government player with an innovative production capability nurtured through these years. But, the Indian government now wants private players to play a bigger role – to design products, develop them, and market them to the world. Against this backdrop, the Indian Government opened up the space sector in 2020. This led to the need to make policies and institutions that would help India tap into this hidden potential.

    Opening up India’s Space Sector

    The Union Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman announced the opening of eight sectors in May 2020 as part of the INR 20 lakh crore (USD 300 billion) Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan (Self-reliant India Campaign). Space was one of the sectors that opened up as part of these reforms.

    The Government said that it wanted the private sector to be a player in the space sector. She said that the Government would provide a level playing field for the non-governmental private entities to build satellites, launch vehicles, and provide space-based services. She promised that future planetary exploration and human outer space travel opportunities would be open to non-governmental private entities. Towards this, she promised access to facilities of India’s space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and a liberal geospatial policy.

    India identified that space held a huge commercial potential for growth. It wanted non-governmental private entities (NGPEs) to be part of this growth. When the Government says NGPEs it is referring to academic institutions, start-ups, and industry. 

    As a part of opening up the space sector, NewSpace India Ltd (NSIL), which was set up in the previous year, was repurposed to drive a move from a supply-driven to a demand-driven model. NSIL would act as an aggregator of demands from the market. It would then supply the services provided earlier by ISRO. For this, it would take over ownership of ISRO’s operational launch vehicle and satellite fleet. It would commercialize the production of the launch vehicle fleet by handing it over to a private consortium. 

    The opening up also involved setting up a regulator, Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe). IN-SPACe would provide a one-stop shop for all space-related activities in India. ISRO would then concern itself with the research and development of various space technologies and applications.

    IN-SPACe would “promote, hand hold, permit, monitor and supervise space activities by NGPEs and accord necessary permissions as per the regulatory provisions, exemptions and statutory guidelines”.

    Developments since the Announcement

    A draft Space Activities Bill, 2017 had been floated for comments from stakeholders and the public. This bill was to provide an overall legal framework for the space sector. As of February 2022, the bill has completed public and legal consultations and has been sent to the various Ministries for their approval.

    IN-SPACe was established. Pawan Goenka, a former Managing Director of the Indian automobile major, Mahindra & Mahindra, was made Chairman of IN-SPACe. It was reported in February 2022 that ISRO facilities and expertise were extended to the NGPEs. ISRO facilities are being shared with these private entities at no or reasonable cost basis.

    NSIL undertook its first fully commercial launch for Brazil’s Amazonia 1 and fourteen ride-share satellites in February 2021, on the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle’s (PSLV) PSLV-C51 mission. It is also undertaking the first demand-driven communication satellite [PDF] launch. It will launch the GSAT-24 communications satellite to fulfill the demand of Direct-to-Home company, Tata Sky (now Tata Play). The launch is expected to take place on board the European Ariane V in the first half of this year.

    The Department of Space had provided various draft policies on its website for comments. These include draft policies on Space Communications, Remote Sensing, Technology Transfer, Navigation, Space Transportation, Space exploration and Space Situational Awareness, and Human Spaceflight through 2020 and 2021. India, at present, has, only Space Communications and Remote Sensing policies. 

    Although space startups have been present in India since 2011, there was a real acceleration in the number of startups that started following the opening up of the space sector. As per statistics shared by the Indian Government in February 2022, there are more than 50 space startups presently in India. These work in areas such as building satellites, launch vehicles, satellite subsystems like electric propulsion systems, as well as various space-based applications in remote sensing, agriculture, fisheries, economic growth forecasting, etc. The Indian Government hopes to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) in the space sector.

    Obstacles in the Way

    As with any reform, there is a feeling that the reforms are not being implemented fast enough. It is not known when the draft Space Activities bill would be cleared by the Union Government and tabled in Parliament. The Space Communications policy is expected to be finalized by April 2022. The status of the other policy drafts is currently not known.

    In the interim, ISRO is tasked with clearing the backlog of remote sensing, communication, navigation, scientific, and interplanetary missions of national importance which have been delayed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. India has only had 5 launches from India since 2020. One of them was a failure. There are limits on the number of launches ISRO is able to do in a financial year (March to April). This period of transition would be a difficult one to manage at ISRO, as it would have to fulfill launches for NSIL as well. 

    NSIL floated tenders for the commercialization of the PSLV in 2019. It has still not been announced as to who the tender is awarded to. There are two other operational launch vehicles, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) and the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV Mk-III) that also need to be similarly commercialized. 

    All these delays then make the regulator, In-SPACe ineffective to do much other than provide access to DoS facilities until there is regulatory clarity with the publication of draft policies and the passage of the draft Space Activities Bill in Parliament.

    Hopeful Future?

    While it is expected that the infrastructure put in place after the announcement of the space reforms, would take anywhere from half a decade to a decade, the future remains hopeful. 

    In the decade, India expects to launch interplanetary missions to the Moon, Mars, and Venus. It also expects to operationalize its human spaceflight program in the first half of this decade. In addition, it expects to launch missions for communications, remote sensing, navigation, and scientific applications.

    It is expected that these reforms would bear fruit in the future decades. India hopes to participate and play a bigger role in the global space economy. It hopes that its start-ups today will provide goods and services not only for India but also for the world. 

  • A First Step to better Space Situational Awareness

    It was three years after the Kargil war in 1998. It was more than a month after the deadly attacks of September 11. A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) carrying a satellite with possible military applications was launched from India’s space port, Sriharikota.

    Cover of the Jan-Mar 2003 edition of Space India. Source: ISRO.

    The armed forces wanted a way to watch the border with Pakistan. The satellite launched on-board the PSLV-C3 mission had a capability to see vehicles on the ground (1 m resolution) and could hence help spot infiltration bids by military or terrorists from across the border from Pakistan.

    This was the Technology Experiment Satellite (TES). The launch took place without much fanfare.

    But, this mission had a more lasting impact than just this important near-term national security mission. Flying with TES, were the Belgian PROBA and the German BIRD satellites. The PSLV after placing TES and BIRD in circular orbits, moved using its yaw RCS thrusters to place PROBA in an elliptical orbit. Each of these customers paid India $1 million for the mission. This was a big deal then, being just the second commercial mission that India was flying.

    PSLV-C3 sequence of satellite separation. Illustration in the Space India edition Oct-Dec 2001.

    This demonstrated PSLV capability to place multiple satellites in multiple orbits. So, the primary satellite could be placed in one orbit while the ride-share satellites could fly to the same or other orbits.

    Within a couple of months of the launch, the fourth stage of the satellite broke-up on 19 December, 2002. A paper written for the 34th Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) Scientific Assembly held in Houston, USA, by P Bandopadhyay, R Sharma and V Adimurthy identified the cause as explosion. They predicted that 75% of the debris would decay in the Earth’s atmosphere by end-2002.

    In the Space Situational Assessment 2021 that ISRO released yesterday, they shared that 76 (almost 20%) of the 386 debris pieces from the PSLV-C3 fourth stage explosion still remain in orbit.

    Although ISRO knew that passivation was important, this mission seems to have prompted active ISRO efforts towards passivation of upper stages of launch vehicles and spacecrafts of ISRO. This 2019 paper by Santosh Kosambe throws light on these efforts to reduce the contribution of space debris because of ISRO launches.

    A K Ganeshan, then with the Flight Dynamics Center at ISRO Satellite Center (now, U R Rao Satellite Center) wrote a piece about space debris in the January to the March 2003 edition. This, seems to be one of the first public write-ups on the issue published by ISRO.

    Ganeshan and Adimurthy (from the 2002 COSPAR paper above) wrote a paper together in Acta Astronautica in February 2006. This seems to be a seminal paper in the active efforts ISRO took in reducing space debris.

    The Space Situational Assessment shares important information about Indian assets (spacecraft and Indian space debris) in orbit broadly. It shares the methods by which ISRO tracks these objects (optical telescopes and radar). It also shares the debris avoidance maneuvers it has performed to protect Indian space assets (satellites and even the Chandrayaan-II orbiter).

    Sharing this important information publicly is an important first step. Transparently sharing this information with data (two-line elements) would be the logical next step.

    ISRO has been building this capability with a series of optical telescopes and radars to be installed for monitoring. This would be the basic institutional infrastructure required since India is responsible, as per international law, for accidents in space caused due to Indian space assets (spacecraft and debris).

    My former colleague at Takshashila, Aditya Pareek and I had written a piece in The Wire Science asking for more involvement from the open-source intelligence community. ISRO must encourage the growth of this talent in India. The sharing of the data with two-line elements will help the development and growth of an Indian community.

    India has also begun the process of opening up the space sector for private companies. As private companies build spacecraft and launch vehicles, there would be an increase in the number of space assets to be monitored. While ISRO built infrastructure can monitor these, Indian companies should also become part of the solution. Companies like LeoLabs show how private companies can help solve this problem.

    As the number of Indian assets in space grows, it will become increasingly important to work with other space-faring nations which may endanger Indian assets or vice-versa.

    In short, we will need institutional capability, amateur enthusiasts, private companies and collaboration with other space-faring nations to keep Indian assets in space safe and to reduce Indian liability in case of any space accidents.

  • What they talk about when they talk about the GSLV?

    The GSLV-F10/EOS-03 mission failed on August 12, 2021. The vehicle faced an issue in it’s third cryogenic stage.

    What does ISRO mean when they say GSLV? There is a lot of confusion between the GSLV Mk I and the GSLV Mk II. The YouTuber Gareeb Scientist raised this question in a video he posted on August 8, 2021. He provides the reasons for this confusion.

    I believed the first version of the story shared in Gareeb Scientist’s video. I believed that the Mk I was a reference to the GSLVs which flew with the Russian cryogenic engine, KVD-1. And, thought that the Mk II referred to the GSLV which flew with the Indian cryogenic engine, CE-7.5.

    This version was shared by ISRO in the brochure of the GSLV-D3 which flew on April 15, 2010. ISRO has removed this brochure from it’s website. But, there is an archived version online as well as on the VSSC website [PDF]. Page two of this brochure carries this explanation.

    The Wikipedia page for GSLV still references this explanation and describes variants in this manner. I think that this has contributed to this confusion.

    ISRO seems to have changed this version of the story in 2015 in an e-book published on its website, Fishing Hamlet to Red Planet. You need an epub reader to read the book. In an essay by R V Perumal titled, Evolution of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, he mentions that the GSLV Mk I was actually a modified version of the PSLV with a cryogenic upper stage. However, since the Cryogenic Stage did not work out for the PSLV, hence the idea of the GSLV Mk I was dropped. Perumal was the Project Director for the PSLV and GSLV and later the Director, Liquid Propulsion Systems Center (LPSC). I think I would trust this version.

    Since there is no Mk I and all the flights of the GSLV are what ISRO called the Mk II project, it seems ISRO just dropped the Mk II and began calling the launch vehicle GSLV in 2017. This change is also seen on the ISRO website on the GSLV page from 2017.

    The GSLV Mk III is a totally different project. I think the GSLV tag got attached to it only because it primarily delivers its payload to a geostationary transfer orbit.

    Addendum – August 17, 2021

    In response to this blog post @zingaroo replied on Twitter stating that ISRO had always called the GSLVs with the Russian cryogenic engines as the Mk-I and the ones with the Indian cryogenic engines as the Mk-II. He provided two examples of the same from the past.

    He presents evidence from the magazine, SPACE-India April-June 2003, Page 11. Also from Gopal Raj’s book Reach for the Stars published in 2000.

    It seems ISRO is also re-writing history in a way. It seems that the project started somewhere after 2010.

  • Does ISRO have any plans?

    India’s space programme seems to be stuck in a rut.

    India has three broad tracks in it’s space programme – satellites and launch vehicles programme for remote sensing, communications and navigation, planetary exploration and human spaceflight. We are trying to outsource the first to a private industry that is not prepared to handle the responsibility yet. The second is moving in slow motion. The third seems to be pushing really hard to achieve the unachievable. In the recently held, Global Space Exploration Conference 2021, Chairman, ISRO had this to say:

    This is a statement that the media in India has run several times. Hence, his statement did not get any media coverage in India. ISRO is going through tough times with the spaceport under lockdown because of the large number of COVID-19 cases.

    The United Arab Emirates seems to be having more ambitious planetary exploration plans than India at the moment. They are talking about two lunar missions, they have signed up for the Artemis accords and are planning to send the second astronaut to the ISS soon.

    UAE has grown rich on an important natural resource, oil. This resource is limited on Earth. This has helped the nation learn important lessons in importance of natural resources for the development of the country. Hence, they want to be part of the space faring nations who get to decide how space resources are used just like OPEC controls crude oil prices on Earth.

    India used to announce plans like this before. Before the Chandrayaan 1 launch, we spoke of landing humans on the Moon by 2020. While factors beyond ISRO’s control delayed the realization of these projects by years, it gave everyone a broad idea of where India was headed. Now, there is just silence in this regard.

    Chairman, ISRO in his New Year message had said that the various centers had drawn up decadal plans but so far we have not seen any. When there is no action physically due to valid reasons, this is the right time to think of things. For example, China has been putting out studies about how to get humans to Mars. ISRO has been doing these studies but not publishing them.

    The civilian space programme is not secretive. The idea is to use this programme to raise the morale of the workforce, inject excitement for science and commerce in the country and project India’s rising capability in the sector. This communication is an important task that is assigned to Chairman, ISRO.