India special: Space programme presses ahead

19 February 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Anil Ananthaswamy

http://www.newscientist.com/special/india/mg18524871.000

Rocketing evolutionNESTLED amid the eucalyptus, cashew and coconut trees of

Sriharikota Island on the eastern coast of India, north of Chennai, is a 76-metre steel
tower. If all goes to plan, some time in late 2007 the tower will be engulfed in flames as
India's first mission to the moon blasts off. Sriharikota will also be the launch site for
India's most advanced scientific research satellite, Astrosat. The satellite will measure,
among other things, X-ray radiation emitted by matter sucked into black holes and given
off at the birth and collision of stars.

But why is India, a country that still has so many development problems on the ground,
aiming for the heavens? To Indian scientists, the question is not only patronising of their
scientific aspirations, it betrays an ignorance of the Indian space programme's greater
purpose and successes against the odds.

India's political leaders say the country cannot afford not to have a space programme.
Indira Gandhi, who was India's longest-serving prime minister, believed it was not only
important for science, but also vital to India's development.

“Several groups are trying to create artificial life by identifying the essential genes
needed to support a simple living cell, and then stitching together this minimal
genome”Take, for example, India's six remote-sensing satellites - the largest such
constellation in the world. These monitor the country's land and coastal waters so that
scientists can advise rural communities on the location of aquifers and where to find
watercourses, suggest to fishermen when to set sail for the best catch, and warn coastal
communities of imminent storms (see "Eyes in the sky"). India's seven communication
satellites, the biggest civilian system in the Asia-Pacific region, now reach some of the
remotest corners of the country, providing television coverage to 90 per cent of the
population. The system is also being used to extend remote healthcare services and
education to the rural poor.

But it has been a long time coming. When India first detonated a nuclear device in 1974,
the US and European nations imposed widespread sanctions to restrict India's access to
technologies that could be used to make a nuclear missile. This hobbled the country's
rocket development programme and forced the Indian Space Research Organisation
(ISRO) to reinvent technologies it could no longer buy. In the long run this has given
India an advantage over other countries with aspirations to reach space. Its space
programme is already largely self-sufficient and aims to soon be completely independent
of foreign support.
It hasn't all been plain sailing. Its first rocket, the Satellite Launch Vehicle, ended up
crashing into the Bay of Bengal 5 minutes after launch in 1979. The following year it
placed a 40-kilogram remote-sensing satellite into near-Earth orbit, but the satellite's
perigee was lower than planned and it entered the atmosphere and burnt up after only 130
orbits. The Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle followed, and in 1992, after two crashes,
it finally succeeded in lifting 150 kilograms to a height of 435 kilometres.

“India's first rocket, the Satellite Launch Vehicle, ended up crashing into the Bay of
Bengal 5 minutes after launch”ISRO moved on to the Polar Synchronous Launch
Vehicle, designed to carry 1-tonne satellites to a height of nearly 1000 kilometres.
Though the first launch in September 1993 crashed, the PSLV has since performed
flawlessly, placing seven Indian satellites and four from other countries into orbit. "It is
our workhorse," says Madhavan Nair, director of ISRO. In 2003 the rocket was used to
launch India's latest remote-sensing satellite, IRS-P6, capable of imaging the Earth's
surface to a resolution of 5 metres.

To put its heavier communications satellites into geostationary orbit, India still has to rely
on foreign hardware. But that may soon change. ISRO's latest rocket, the
Geosynchronous Launch Vehicle (GSLV) is able to lift large satellites into geostationary
orbit, 36,000 kilometres up. On 20 September 2004, the GSLV launched the 2-tonne
EDUSAT, the world's first satellite dedicated to providing support for educational
projects.

One of the GSLV's rocket boosters is a Russian-made cryogenic engine. International

sanctions meant India was only allowed to buy engines, not the know-how to design and
build them. So for future rockets ISRO engineers are developing their own. Ground tests
have been completed and the plan is to launch a completely home-made GSLV-Mark 2 by
the end of this year, Nair says.

ISRO is already planning the next-generation GSLV, the Mark 3, which will be powerful
enough to launch India's biggest satellites. Nair now has his sights on the commercial
market. A launch on GSLV-Mark 3 should cost about half the rate charged by France, the
US and Russia, he says.

“The moon probe will map the lunar surface at resolutions down to 5 metres, something
that has never been done before”India's space programme is already a money-earner.
ISRO sells infrared images from its remote-sensing satellites to other countries, including
the US, where they are used for mapping. And the Technology Experiment Satellite,
launched in October 2001, is beaming back images of the Earth's surface with a
resolution of 1 metre, though they are not yet available commercially.

Three per cent of ISRO's $3.3 billion 5-year budget is devoted to the planned moon
mission. A reconfigured PSLV rocket will lift Chandrayan - "moon vehicle" in Hindi - to
36,000 kilometres, after which the craft's own engines will take it to the moon. Nair says
one of the purposes of the mission is to inspire Indian youngsters to take up a career in
science.
Chandrayan will create 3D maps of the moon's surface at a resolution of between 5 and
10 metres, something that has never been done before. It will also map the distribution of
ilmenite, a mineral that traps helium-3, a possible source of energy for future bases on the
moon. No manned missions are planned, but if the trip is successful, robots might be sent
up to collect samples.

According to Nair, the Madras School of Economics in Chennai has estimated that
ISRO's projects have added between two and three times the organisation's budget to the
nation's GDP. Several countries in Africa and Asia are seeking ISRO's help to emulate the
model. "India is perhaps the only country where societal needs are met by the space
programme in a cost-effective manner and the services are reaching the needy," says Nair.

From issue 2487 of New Scientist magazine, 19 February 2005, page 33

Eyes in the sky
THOUGH Astrosat and the moon mission are the headline-grabbers, using imaging
satellites for development remains at the top of the agenda for the Indian Space Research
Organisation (ISRO).

For instance, when the skies are relatively clear between January and March, infrared
images are used to measure the reflectance of plant-covered surfaces to check how well
watered the crops are. It is also possible to distinguish between crops such as rice, wheat
and cotton, and even predict whether a crop might fail for lack of water. "We are able to
forecast the yield one month before the harvest," says Venkatakrishna Jayaraman, the
director of ISRO's Earth Observation System. In this way the government can be
forewarned of possible food shortages.

Ensuring a supply of clean drinking water is a problem in many parts of rural India.
Villagers often resort to guessing the right spot to drill a well based on experience, but it
is a hit-and-miss affair. Topographic and hydrological maps produced from satellite
images allow Jayaraman's team to help rural communities locate areas most likely to
yield underground water. "The success rate for drilling wells has gone up from 45 to 90
per cent," says Jayaraman.

The next step for Jayaraman's team is to use the same information to work out where to
build small dams to capture rainwater and recharge underground reservoirs. This
approach could help reclaim arid and semi-arid land for agricultural use.

ISRO's satellites are also having an impact at sea. OCEANSAT, launched in 1999,
monitors the chlorophyll content of oceans and the sea surface temperature. ISRO
scientists use the information to identify areas where cold, nutrient-rich water wells up
from the ocean floor, which in turn attract fish.

The coordinates of these areas are then sent to more than 200 coastal centres. The
upwellings last for several days - meaning the areas identified contain high
concentrations of fish - long enough for fishermen to arrive and gather a sizeable catch.
According to Jayaraman, fish catches have doubled in the last decade.

Besides remote sensing, ISRO operates eight communications satellites. These are now
used by 35,000 commercial customers, all based in India. "If we didn't have the satellites,
they would have gone and hired a satellite from somewhere else," says Appana
Bhaskarnarayana, director of ISRO's satellite communications programme.

ISRO has also used these satellites to implement disaster-warning systems. In 1977 a
cyclone killed 10,000 people on the coast of Andhra Pradesh in south-east India. In the
1990s data from meteorological satellites was used to warn of a similarly devastating
cyclone, dramatically reducing the loss of life to 900. "The technology has helped to
predict cyclones maybe a few hours in advance," says Bhaskarnarayana. "Lots of lives
have been saved."

ISRO is becoming more ambitious in how it plans to use these satellites. It has already
linked 69 hospitals in remote areas of India such as the Andaman Islands to 19 hospitals
in India's main cities. A health worker in a remote location can then transmit a patient's
medical information to a specialist in seconds and, in many cases, a video consultation is
sufficient for diagnosis. This means the patient can avoid travelling huge distances unless
it is absolutely necessary.