India raises the ante on its space program

Wednesday morning, India launched a satellite that makes clear its intentions to join what is emerging as a second space race.

After at least 12 days in orbit, it will attempt something that no Indian satellite has ever before attempted: to return to Earth, splashing down in the Bay of Bengal. If successful, India would join an exclusive group – only the United States, Russia, China, and the European Union have mastered the technology necessary to recover a capsule and its cargo safely.

As India considers setting up its own manned space program, this mission represents an indispensable first step. Yet it is also part of Asia's increasing spaceward gaze, as economic maturity and a desire for international prestige – as well as China's entry into the space sweepstakes – prompt countries into action.

"You see this in East Asia in general," says Jeff Foust, editor of The Space Review, an online journal. "Japan feels it has fallen behind China, South Korea is developing its own launch vehicle, and India slots in very close to China. It is a rising power."

For India, Wednesday's launch was a milestone in more than one respect. Not only did it carry the SRE-1 recoverable satellite, which will perform zero-gravity experiments before plunging into the Bay of Bengal, but it also included three other satellites – the largest and most complex payload ever deployed by an Indian rocket.

These are heady times for the Indian Space Research Organization. Since its inception in 1972, ISRO has concerned itself with only the most practical of space projects, such as communications and mapping satellites to help farmers and villagers. In this way, India's space program "is totally unique," says Will Marshall, an expert at the Space Policy Institute in Washington.

Yet as India's economic reforms take hold, and the aspirations of its governing class broaden, its agenda for space has become bolder as well. Next year, ISRO will launch Chandrayaan to the Moon – the first Indian satellite to venture beyond Earth's orbit. By 2013, it hopes to launch a probe to Mars. Later that decade, it could send up its first "gaganaut" – one suggestion for a Sanskrit version of "astronaut" – and even visit the Moon.

As of yet, India has no official manned space program. In November, however, a gathering of 80 of India's top scientists unanimously endorsed an ISRO plan to begin manned spaceflights by 2014. And though the current mission was not developed as a test for manned spaceflight technologies, "all of it would be useful," says S. Krishnamurthy, a spokesman for ISRO in Bangalore.

India insists that this shift from the practical to the adventurous is purely in its own national interest, and not a reaction to any other nation. Indeed, experts say planetary science and manned spaceflight are a logical next step for India.

Page: 1 | 2