University Campuses crucial for India’s Moon and Mars Exploration
Early this week, on 19th April 2021, the US space agency NASA achieved a rare feat, a first of its kind. NASA demonstrated a powered flight using a coaxial rotor drone, weighing merely 1.8 kilograms, from the surface of Mars. The INGENUITY, as the drone is called dotingly, was the first-ever powered flight attempted on any other celestial body ever. In the world of orbiter, landers, and rovers, the addition of a drone as a space-probe platform for extraterrestrial exploration is a significant achievement and step forward.
INGENUITY flew only 3 meters, and even the planned flight tests in the next few days will attempt no more than 6-7 meters of altitude. However, INGENUITY has motivated planetary scientists worldwide to endeavour new space mission designs. Imagine a drone with a bigger payload capacity and high-endurance, taking off from Mars, of course vertically, and probing Olympus Mons, the highest mountain in the entire Solar System! Likewise, imagine a drone similarly flying over the ice-filled craters on the South Pole of our Moon! A drone, known as DRAGONFLY, which is already planned by NASA, will go to Saturn's moon Titan and hover over the lakes of ethane and methane on that icy, cold Saturnian moon. The possibilities for writing about this topic are immense. But again, is it only NASA’s remit? Certainly not. NASA is not a governmental monolith. The lead entity working on INGENUITY is the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a long-time NASA partner institution. And where is it based? The California Institute of Technology is a major private research university.
NASA continues to be the global pioneer in space exploration, and the credit goes to the space agency’s ability to interface with for-profit industrial research centres and not-for-profit research centres equally. Many countries have aptly recognised this model set by NASA. Let me give an example here. Six years ago, the United Arab Emirates decided to attempt a Mars mission, HOPE. The HOPE spacecraft needed scientific and technical assistance from the US. It was not NASA that came to the fore, but the University of Colorado. UAE was able to secure launch services from the Japanese space agency, JAXA. Through this international cooperation, the Hope spacecraft was launched, and it successfully reached Mars in early 2021. Although it was the UAE’s first space mission, they could have easily called it a technology demonstrator to manage expectations regarding new scientific discoveries. While working on HOPE, the UAE government ensured that most space capabilities are not limited to the space agency and its constituent, the Mohamed Bin Rashid Space Centre. It ensured that many of its state-led and private universities developed space competencies that complement the space agency and attract global talent. The state-led United Arab Emirates University has set up the National Space Science and Technology Center to cultivate new talent and support the national space goals. The New York University at Abu Dhabi, a private educational institution, has not fallen behind. It, too, is aiming to share the tasks and goals of the state-led university.
What the UAE has done is not new. The US has already transferred control of several space missions from NASA to its universities. For instance, the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University has been at the forefront. The DRAGONFLY mission mentioned above comes from its innovation. The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona is among the lead institutions of the ongoing asteroid sample-return mission OSIRIS-REX. China, too, has distributed its planetary exploration aspirations to entities like the State Key Laboratory for Planetary Science at the University of Macau. In Europe, Luxembourg has become a vital node of the global asteroid and lunar mining pursuits. The European Space Agency, in late 2020, for the same established its premier European Space Resource Innovation Centre on the campus of the University of Luxembourg. I, too, got an opportunity to work on the ESA Rosetta mission, having graduated from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, a spacecraft engineering and space science institution based at the University of Göttingen’s campus in Germany.
The recommendation is not to make India follow suit blindly. First, we must realise that the Government of India, with the May 2020 space reforms, has given a free hand to the Indian private sector to participate in the national space exploration goals. This should not be assumed to be an opportunity only for private companies and startups. Indian universities, especially private universities, must come ahead, set up planetary science laboratories and centres. After all, the private participation that the government is hinting at also means ‘not-for-profit’ private entities too. These laboratories and centres will become an important ‘missing link’ between the space agency, ISRO, its sister laboratories at the Department of Space and other government ministries, and the private industry.
The US, Europe, Japan, and China all have space agencies and interfaces with the startup and private sectors. But they have equally populated planetary science competencies in public and private universities. Delightfully, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration identified the necessity of an ISRO-Industry arm. It should now explicitly call for an ISRO-Not-for-profit and Not-for-profit-Industry arm in the space sector. Without these two proposed components, India’s progress in space exploration will be skewed.
Indian universities, public and private, need to comprehend the significance of trans-disciplinary planetary science and space science departments and centres. These centres will drive the universities’ high-impact research, foster innovation, generate commercial spin-offs, and train students for diverse careers. Such centres on university campuses will break the walls between natural scientists, applied scientists and engineers. This will truly be Advantage India in deep space.
The original piece was published in NewsBharati.
