After Chandrayaan II's launch from the Sriharikota Space Center and launch pad in Andhra Pradhesh's Nellore district, one cannot stop making distinctions between the two most coveted space programs across the world - ISRO and NASA. These two space agencies are consistently maintaining their position as the top 5 space agencies in the world. I recently read a meme that said and I quote - "Some countries have the moon on their flag while some other countries (notably, USA, Russia, China and India) have their flags on the moon" - and I couldn't wait to blog about what makes both these agencies tick! But before I do that, I'd like to congratulate all the engineers and scientists of ISRO for a hugely successful take-off mission and hoping to hear the best from the mission in the near future!
Before I jump in to the verbatim of NASA v ISRO, the background of both organizations should be considered. We all know that NASA is the space agency of the US - one of the richest and developed countries in the world. ISRO is the space agency of India, a developing country that has the potential to be a mega super-power in the near future - however, that said, the difference in budget and available technologies mostly reflect in the performance of both agencies. Even though ISRO is budget deprived, it is capable of competing with top spending space agencies like NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA is constantly wanting to be on the cutting edge of technology and also of mission planning - they sent the first humans to the moon (exactly 50 years ago! Congratulations Neil Armstrong and Fight on!), they hold the records for the first probes to visit all the outer planets (even Pluto!) and they welcome international partnerships on all their missions. NASA's JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA) is the grand master of interplanetary communication, telemetry and travel and routinely cooperates with other space agencies to track and communicate with space probes that have left our immediate cislunar neighborhood. On the other hand, ISRO is known for shocking the rest of the world with brilliant accomplishments on a spartan budget - successfully sending a probe (of their own design and manufacture - MADE IN INDIA!) to Mars (on their own rocket) on their very first attempt (yeah, do watch Mission Mangal on August 15th to be inspired - proud to be an Indian!) and successfully testing a scaled prototype of their own space shuttle. Among many other modest but significant successes of course, those two in particular have cemented their status as one of the premier space agencies in the world!
ISRO's first rocket, the M-100 was launched in 21st November 1963 - it was imported from Russia. At the time, India didn't have a space agency - 6 years later, in 1969 on the day of it's 23rd year of independence, ISRO was formed. ISRO then developed a series of launch vehicles like the SLV, ASLV, PSLV, GSLV and its different variants of Satellite Launch Vehicles and also conducted multiple satellite launches. Using these vehicles, ISRO launched a bunch of satellites as part of the commensal agreement with other space agencies for indigenous use. In the US, the scenario is different - most rockets used by NASA are developed by a joint venture between NASA and other private companies like Raytheon, SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin etc - this excludes the rockets already developed by NASA such as Atlas series and Thor series. SpaceX has been heavily involved in recent satellite launches and multiple missions like the Parker Solar Probe experiment used the Delta IV-Heavy vehicle developed by the United Launch Alliance - a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Vehicles used by NASA have a heavy payload lifting capacity when compared to ISRO. Cryogenic technology is the one that far distinguishes the two agencies - cryogenics, if you didn't know, is the study of materials at very low temperatures. In cryogenic engines, liquefied gas fuels are used at very low temperatures for propulsion. NASA had cryogenics in their DNA much before ISRO even knew about it - NASA's Saturn V made them pioneers in moon landing experiments and they denied access to cryogenic tech to all space agencies, including ISRO. ISRO then indigenously developed the technology and successfully placed geostationary satellites in geosynchronous zones and orbits. GPS has been USA's and NASA's biggest strength and they are supposed to have the best monitoring and sensing systems in the world. ISRO on the other hand developed a regional navigation system known as IRNSS (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System) with scientists and engineers from IIST (Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology), Trivandrum.
ISRO has the upper hand in the number of commercial satellite launches in the world - their satellite launches are conducted by Antrix Corporation Ltd. - the commercial arm of ISRO. ISRO absolutely shattered a world record when they launched 104 satellites in a single launch and broke the record previously set by the Russian Space Agency who had launched 37 satellites in a single launch! When comparing this to NASA, the US space agency is far behind! India's Mars Mission (Mangalyaan) with a budget of $73 million, was far cheaper (almost 10x times) when comparable to NASA's $671 million Maven satellite launch thereby acknowledging the disparity between the cost of US space missions and India's burgeoning program! America attributes this low cost of a mission in India to cheaper parts and labor as well as the complexity of the mission. It takes a whole team of engineers to get this done right in the very first attempt and the cost per engineer in India is much less when compared to the US (sad, but true). The mean annual income of an aeronautical engineer in the US is just under $105,000. While it is difficult to make direct comparisons, a blog that covers the aerospace industry by DRDO indicates that the higher end of the scale for engineers is less than $30,000! Similarly, there's a vast gulf between the pay for electronics engineers as well! The average electronics engineer in the US earns a little more than $120,000, while in India, he or she might rake in less than $12,000 a year in a company like say, Samsung (or even Intel :p) These figures are approximations - given factors such as the differences in experience levels and fluctuations in currency varies over time - but they give you an idea of the disparity. In general, it seems safe to say that engineers in India make between 1/10th and 1/5th of what their US counterparts do in absolute terms.
Many financiers in the US were also skeptical that India's first Mangalyaan program was just about India's goal to getting to Mars and had nothing to do with the right instrumentation necessary. That said, it was India's first try of a very complex mission that was orders of magnitude more difficult than their first Chandrayaan probe in 2008; now, they're trying hard to land on the Moon, learning from their previous mistakes! One week after a first attempt was canceled at the last minute, the mission blasted off at 2.13 am PDT today from the Satish Dhawan Space Center to explore the mysterious south pole of the Moon for the possibility of water ice and Helium-3 deposits that many consider to be the future energy source for Earth - this is something that no other unmanned mission to the Moon has achieved! It is important to note that every successful Indian mission instills a sense of togetherness, unity and pride among all Indians! The timing of this was probably for the best (50 years after man laid his first steps on the moon) and don't get me wrong - we are getting there! In around 45-60 days, the lander is expected to break off from orbit and gently land on the moon on auto-pilot and it would cement India as a global super-power in space science and tech! If not, lessons will be learnt and we will continue to get the mission successful the right way! It's in our DNA to never give up.
Before I jump in to the verbatim of NASA v ISRO, the background of both organizations should be considered. We all know that NASA is the space agency of the US - one of the richest and developed countries in the world. ISRO is the space agency of India, a developing country that has the potential to be a mega super-power in the near future - however, that said, the difference in budget and available technologies mostly reflect in the performance of both agencies. Even though ISRO is budget deprived, it is capable of competing with top spending space agencies like NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA is constantly wanting to be on the cutting edge of technology and also of mission planning - they sent the first humans to the moon (exactly 50 years ago! Congratulations Neil Armstrong and Fight on!), they hold the records for the first probes to visit all the outer planets (even Pluto!) and they welcome international partnerships on all their missions. NASA's JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA) is the grand master of interplanetary communication, telemetry and travel and routinely cooperates with other space agencies to track and communicate with space probes that have left our immediate cislunar neighborhood. On the other hand, ISRO is known for shocking the rest of the world with brilliant accomplishments on a spartan budget - successfully sending a probe (of their own design and manufacture - MADE IN INDIA!) to Mars (on their own rocket) on their very first attempt (yeah, do watch Mission Mangal on August 15th to be inspired - proud to be an Indian!) and successfully testing a scaled prototype of their own space shuttle. Among many other modest but significant successes of course, those two in particular have cemented their status as one of the premier space agencies in the world!
ISRO's first rocket, the M-100 was launched in 21st November 1963 - it was imported from Russia. At the time, India didn't have a space agency - 6 years later, in 1969 on the day of it's 23rd year of independence, ISRO was formed. ISRO then developed a series of launch vehicles like the SLV, ASLV, PSLV, GSLV and its different variants of Satellite Launch Vehicles and also conducted multiple satellite launches. Using these vehicles, ISRO launched a bunch of satellites as part of the commensal agreement with other space agencies for indigenous use. In the US, the scenario is different - most rockets used by NASA are developed by a joint venture between NASA and other private companies like Raytheon, SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin etc - this excludes the rockets already developed by NASA such as Atlas series and Thor series. SpaceX has been heavily involved in recent satellite launches and multiple missions like the Parker Solar Probe experiment used the Delta IV-Heavy vehicle developed by the United Launch Alliance - a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Vehicles used by NASA have a heavy payload lifting capacity when compared to ISRO. Cryogenic technology is the one that far distinguishes the two agencies - cryogenics, if you didn't know, is the study of materials at very low temperatures. In cryogenic engines, liquefied gas fuels are used at very low temperatures for propulsion. NASA had cryogenics in their DNA much before ISRO even knew about it - NASA's Saturn V made them pioneers in moon landing experiments and they denied access to cryogenic tech to all space agencies, including ISRO. ISRO then indigenously developed the technology and successfully placed geostationary satellites in geosynchronous zones and orbits. GPS has been USA's and NASA's biggest strength and they are supposed to have the best monitoring and sensing systems in the world. ISRO on the other hand developed a regional navigation system known as IRNSS (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System) with scientists and engineers from IIST (Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology), Trivandrum.
ISRO has the upper hand in the number of commercial satellite launches in the world - their satellite launches are conducted by Antrix Corporation Ltd. - the commercial arm of ISRO. ISRO absolutely shattered a world record when they launched 104 satellites in a single launch and broke the record previously set by the Russian Space Agency who had launched 37 satellites in a single launch! When comparing this to NASA, the US space agency is far behind! India's Mars Mission (Mangalyaan) with a budget of $73 million, was far cheaper (almost 10x times) when comparable to NASA's $671 million Maven satellite launch thereby acknowledging the disparity between the cost of US space missions and India's burgeoning program! America attributes this low cost of a mission in India to cheaper parts and labor as well as the complexity of the mission. It takes a whole team of engineers to get this done right in the very first attempt and the cost per engineer in India is much less when compared to the US (sad, but true). The mean annual income of an aeronautical engineer in the US is just under $105,000. While it is difficult to make direct comparisons, a blog that covers the aerospace industry by DRDO indicates that the higher end of the scale for engineers is less than $30,000! Similarly, there's a vast gulf between the pay for electronics engineers as well! The average electronics engineer in the US earns a little more than $120,000, while in India, he or she might rake in less than $12,000 a year in a company like say, Samsung (or even Intel :p) These figures are approximations - given factors such as the differences in experience levels and fluctuations in currency varies over time - but they give you an idea of the disparity. In general, it seems safe to say that engineers in India make between 1/10th and 1/5th of what their US counterparts do in absolute terms.
Many financiers in the US were also skeptical that India's first Mangalyaan program was just about India's goal to getting to Mars and had nothing to do with the right instrumentation necessary. That said, it was India's first try of a very complex mission that was orders of magnitude more difficult than their first Chandrayaan probe in 2008; now, they're trying hard to land on the Moon, learning from their previous mistakes! One week after a first attempt was canceled at the last minute, the mission blasted off at 2.13 am PDT today from the Satish Dhawan Space Center to explore the mysterious south pole of the Moon for the possibility of water ice and Helium-3 deposits that many consider to be the future energy source for Earth - this is something that no other unmanned mission to the Moon has achieved! It is important to note that every successful Indian mission instills a sense of togetherness, unity and pride among all Indians! The timing of this was probably for the best (50 years after man laid his first steps on the moon) and don't get me wrong - we are getting there! In around 45-60 days, the lander is expected to break off from orbit and gently land on the moon on auto-pilot and it would cement India as a global super-power in space science and tech! If not, lessons will be learnt and we will continue to get the mission successful the right way! It's in our DNA to never give up.
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