Space beyond Chandrayaan: Will Artemis Accords be a game-changer for India?

The moon mission follows up on earlier missions, but the recently signed Artemis Accords with Nasa have the potential to be a bigger game changer

The successful launch of Chandrayaan III has hogged most of the space-related headlines in the recent past. But Chandrayaan III is actually business as usual in that it is the next logical step in the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro) long-term plans whereas India’s recent signup to the Artemis Accords and the thrust of the new Space Policy are likely to push the space programme to entirely new heights.

Chandrayaan III follows up on two earlier Isro moon missions. The first of these, in 2008, discovered water ice on the moon while the second in 2019 managed to place a still-functional orbiter around the moon. But C-II failed to make a controlled landing and can therefore be called only a partial success.

The mission design of Chandrayaan III is on similar lines to C-II. It will orbit the Earth multiple times to gain speed and carry out a slingshot manoeuvre that will take it into lunar orbit. Approximately 44 days after launch, it will be looking to land a module on the moon near the unexplored South Pole.

If that goes well, a robotic rover will move around on the surface. As always, multiple observations and scientific experiments are planned, both from the lunar orbiter as well as from the surface rover. With luck, those experiments will throw up new surprises.

In itself, this is an impressive feat — India would only be the fourth nation to pull off a soft lunar landing. Since Isro knows, or at least has a good idea of, what went wrong with the C-II landing, there’s every chance that C-III will succeed.

Landing on the moon is probably more difficult in technical terms than landing on Mars. The surface of the moon is covered in most places by a layer of dust that is many metres thick and it has extremely low gravity, at about one-sixth (16-17 per cent) that of Earth — much lower than even Mars gravity (around 38 per cent of Earth). A lander can sink into the dust and it’s hard to know how deep that is, at any given spot. A lander can also bounce many times on landing, which means that it can be even more difficult to make a controlled landing and end up upright in a configuration where a rover can emerge and start operating.

However, the Artemis Accords promises to improve cooperation between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) and Isro, which has enormous, generally positive implications for the Indian aerospace industry. The US agency has always operated on a basis of setting specifications for the equipment it wants, doing the designs for some of it, and tendering out everything. Nasa also licenses out a whole heap of patents every year.

Over six decades, technology originally developed for the US Space Program has enabled entire new areas of commercial development such as robotics, solar energy, water and waste recycling, computerisation, autonomous vehicle technology, radiation shielding, remote medicine and telemetry, exotic materials, and what have you. As a result of Nasa’s policy, America has a huge aerospace industry, plus countless spin-offs.

Isro does most of its own design but it does tender out. The new Indian Space Policy 2023 also promises to share technology with private players — there are already over 400 start-ups hoping to cooperate with Isro.

Since Nasa has an annual budget of $25 billion versus Rs 12,500 crore ($1.6 billion) for India’s Department of Space, Nasa tenders are worth multiples of Isro’s and it has a far, far larger treasure chest of intellectual property. Signing up for the bilateral Artemis Accords means that Indian aerospace companies could also become part of the US space and aerospace industrial complex and eligible to bid for Nasa tenders. That in itself is huge.

As an Artemis signatory, Isro would also be part of manned missions. Artemis plans to set up a space station in orbit around the moon as well as a permanent habitat on the surface. Nasa would be willing to share technology with Isro as well as allowing Gaganauts to participate in such missions.

Isro has zero expertise when it comes to sending people into space, keeping them there in good health and sane, and bringing them back alive. It was planning to use Russian facilities to train them and to develop the requisite technical and medical expertise. It was also intending to test semi-cryogenic engines in Ukraine. For obvious reasons, those intentions are now on hold. Nasa could help Isro to improve its grasp of these domains.

More futuristically, signing Artemis implies India is on board with the US interpretations of The Outer Space Treaty. This means being prepared to get involved at the government level as well as private sector space exploration and mining for valuable minerals. This may be decades into the future in reality but it does define India’s policy in what would otherwise be a grey area.

Advantage Artemis

• Signing up for the bilateral Accords means Indian aerospace firms could also become part of the US space and aerospace industrial complex and eligible to bid for Nasa tenders
• As an Artemis signatory, Isro would also be part of manned missions
• Artemis plans to set up a space station in orbit around the moon as well as a permanent habitat on the surface. Nasa would be willing to share technology with Isro as well as allowing Gaganauts to participate in such missions
• Isro has zero expertise in sending people into space and bringing them back alive. Nasa could help Isro to improve its grasp of these domains
• Signing Artemis implies India is on board with the US interpretations of The Outer Space Treaty. This means being prepared to get involved at the govt level as well as private sector space exploration and mining for valuable minerals