India approves development of reusable launcher, space station module

The Indian government has approved $2.7 billion in new spending for its space program.

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The Indian government has approved $2.7 billion in new spending for its space program.

All at once, India’s government has approved plans to develop a new reusable rocket, the centerpiece of an Indian space station, a robotic sample return mission to the Moon, and a science probe to explore Venus. “Great news for the space sector!” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X. Collectively, the projects authorized by India’s union cabinet will cost an estimated $2.7 billion. Most of the funding will go toward the country’s space station and a reusable launch vehicle. If the projects reach their goals, the approvals announced by Modi on Wednesday will put India on a trajectory to become the third-largest space power in the 2030s, after the United States and China. V. Narayanan, director of India’s Liquid Propulsion Systems Center, stated this was the objective in a recent presentation, writing that India’s space initiatives will catapult the country to a place “among the three important space powers in the world.” This suggests India aspires to surpass Russia’s space program, which is experiencing a financial crisis largely due to the country’s war against Ukraine. Russia still has a reliable crew capsule, the Soyuz, and will maintain a robust human spaceflight program as long as the International Space Station remains in orbit. But there are serious questions about whether Russia’s government can support a standalone national space station, a replacement for the Soyuz crew spacecraft, or a heavy-lift reusable rocket. If India succeeds with its space station and reusable rocket and continues to make progress in lunar and interplanetary exploration, there’s reason to believe the South Asian power will do more in space than Russia over the next 15 years. Europe and Japan do a lot in space, too, but they lack independent human spaceflight programs, and their governments have not taken the step to significantly support the development of a reusable rocket. As soon as next year, India aims to become the fourth country to launch its astronauts into orbit with the Gaganyaan human spaceflight program. Modi announced in 2018 that India’s Gaganyaan spacecraft would carry astronauts into space by 2022, but the schedule has been delayed three years, with a crew flight now targeted by the end of 2025. Even if this schedule gets delayed again, India is almost assuredly the next country to join the human spaceflight club. There’s no other space agency making a serious effort in this arena. Last year, India became the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the Moon with the Chandrayaan 3 mission. The lander deployed a small rover to drive across the lunar surface, returning the first detailed measurements of soil composition near the Moon’s south pole. Chandrayaan 3’s landing also set the record for the largest audience for any live event on YouTube, with 8 million users watching as the spacecraft made its final descent. Perhaps that statistic is not surprising for such a historic event in the world’s most populous nation. Modi, India’s nationalist prime minister since 2014, has closely associated himself with India’s successes in space and has used them as a source of national pride. Chandrayaan 3’s landing on the Moon sparked flag-waving celebrations across India. “The whole experience was nothing short of a fairytale,” said Pawan Goenka, chair of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center, a government office acting as a go-between for India’s space agency and the private sector. “The entire country was in a celebratory mood, the kind I have never seen before when India beats Pakistan in a cricket match.” India has been thrifty in pursuing its achievements in space, which include an independent regional navigation satellite network and a growing military space sector. Chandrayaan 3 cost India’s government less than $100 million, a fraction of the cost of a comparable mission managed by NASA. ISRO has received roughly $13 billion in funding over the last decade, good enough for eighth place in the world in terms of government investment, according to Steve Bochinger from the space consulting firm Novaspace. Indian officials know the country’s accomplishments in space, most recently the Chandrayaan 3 landing, have set a high bar for future missions despite economic hardships, extreme income disparities, and limited opportunities for advanced education. “The success of Chandrayaan 3 symbolizes the new India, ready to make its mark in the global space sector,” Goenka said at India’s National Space Day on August 23. “And this success has put India’s capabilities in space technology in the global spotlight. It has also increased the expectations of our countrymen and the world from India’s space industry.” The approvals by India’s union cabinet Wednesday chart the next phase of the country’s space program. Once the Gaganyaan spacecraft starts flying with astronauts, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) will focus on completing a space station in low-Earth orbit by 2035. The union cabinet authorized more than $1.3 billion in new funding for the Gaganyaan program this week, bringing the program’s total budget to $2.4 billion. The overall budget covers not only the development of the Gaganyaan crew capsule and human-rating India’s LVM3 rocket for astronauts, but also now covers the development of the first module for India’s space station. The fresh funding also pays for one additional uncrewed test flight for the Gaganyaan program and eight demonstration missions through 2028, when the first module of India’s Bharatiya Anatriksh Station is also slated for launch. By 2035, India plans to have five modules in orbit to comprise the fully assembled 52-metric-ton space station, and Modi has outlined a vision for an Indian crew landing on the Moon by 2040, although the government approvals this week don’t go that far. “The target is to develop and demonstrate critical technologies for long-duration human space missions,” India’s press information bureau said in a statement. “A national space-based facility such as the Bharatiya Antariksh Station will boost microgravity-based scientific research and technology development activities,” the press bureau said. “This will lead to technological spinoffs and encourage innovations in key areas of research and development.” India’s space agency will partner with industry, academic institutions, and international space agencies on the Gaganyaan program and the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, the press bureau said. Next year, an Indian astronaut selected to train for Gaganyaan missions will launch to the International Space Station (ISS) on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. NASA helped arrange the deal through Axiom Space, which brokers short-duration flights of two to three weeks to the ISS for commercial astronauts. India is also a signatory to the Artemis Accords, a non-binding set of principles among like-minded nations guiding a vision for peaceful and transparent exploration of space. India’s decision to sign the accords was a sign it is forging closer ties with NASA, which targets a landing of US astronauts on the Moon within a few years. Officials have not revealed any detailed plans for Indian contributions to the NASA-led Artemis program or NASA participation in Gaganyaan. Nevertheless, there’s a noteworthy alignment between US and Indian interests in the future of human spaceflight, especially as China moves toward a potential astronaut landing on the Moon by 2030. There’s a fair chance that China will operate the only space station in low-Earth orbit if NASA and its partners decide to decommission the ISS at the end of the decade. NASA is funding several industrial teams to develop commercial space stations to replace the ISS, but it’s far from certain they will be flying by 2030. An Indian space station might provide NASA with another option to host the agency’s experiments or astronauts in low-Earth orbit. India’s union cabinet also approved $1 billion for the development of the Next Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV), a heavy-lift rocket with a reusable first stage booster that ISRO wants operational by around 2033. The NGLV, also known as the Soorya launcher, is a three-stage design capable of delivering payloads up to 30 metric tons (66,000 pounds) into a 500-kilometer (310-mile) orbit. The rocket’s payload capacity will be somewhat less when the first stage reserves propellant for recovery. It will come in two configurations, one with a core liquid-fueled launch vehicle, and another version augmented by two strap-on solid rocket boosters. The next-generation rocket will outclass the LVM3, India’s heaviest rocket flying today. “NGLV will have three times the present payload capability with 1.5 times the cost compared to LVM3, and will also have reusability resulting in low-cost access to space and modular green propulsion systems,” the Indian press information press bureau said. The rocket’s first stage will be powered by nine engines, each generating a quarter-million pounds of thrust at full power. These engines will consume methane and liquid oxygen as propellants and will be capable of throttling up and down, allowing the booster stage to return to Earth after propelling payloads toward space. The Soorya rocket’s first stage will have landing legs to allow it to return for vertical landings on an offshore barge, or back at the launch site, similar to the way SpaceX recovers its Falcon 9 boosters. “We are working on vertical landing, throttleable propulsive assisted landing concepts like SpaceX and Blue Origin,” said S. Somanath, chairman of ISRO, in a question-and-answer session hosted on Instagram last month. “One of the deficiencies of our capability was an engine, a liquid engine, which can be throttled to a very low level.” ISRO is already testing hardware for the new methalox engine, called the LME-1100, Narayanan said last month. “That engine is designed with the throttling capability to go as (low) as 40 percent of its full thrust, and with that we should be in a position to make a vertical landing soon,” Somanath continued. “All of the technology elements for such a landing capability do exist in ISRO. It’s a question of development time and maturing it to make it a possibility. If you wait for it, it will definitely happen.” The second stage of Soorya will have a single methane-fueled engine, and a restartable hydrogen-fueled cryogenic engine will power the third stage. The entire rocket will stand more than 92 meters (301 feet) tall, according to ISRO. ISRO has completed the design of the new methalox engine, called the LME-1100, and is already testing hardware components, Narayanan said last month. Importantly, India’s government wants to develop the next-generation rocket in a public-private partnership with Indian industry. “The NGLV development project will be implemented with maximal participation from the Indian industry, who is also expected to invest in the manufacturing capacity at the outset itself, thereby allowing a seamless transition to the operational phase subsequent to the development,” the press bureau said. India’s space program is still driven by the government, but ISRO is turning over responsibility for manufacturing and launching the country’s workhorse medium-class Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle to the private sector. ISRO is taking early steps to do the same with the smaller SSLV and heavier LVM3 rockets. The strategy for developing the next-generation Soorya rocket appears to take a more commercial approach from the start. At India’s National Space Day last month, the country’s science minister said there are nearly 300 Indian space startups, primarily pursuing projects in the launch, Earth observation, and commercial sectors. The government aims to grow India’s space economy from $8 billion to $44 billion over the next 10 years. There will be three NGLV test flights, and India’s government seeks to complete development of the new rocket within eight years. Once operational, the rocket will support national and commercial missions, including crew launches to the Indian space station, India’s government said. Eventually, ISRO will scale up the Soorya rocket to carry as much as 70 metric tons of payload mass into low-Earth orbit, Somanath said. “This is the rocket which will take human beings to the Moon, but in the meantime, we are building it in building blocks.” India’s robotic exploration program also received support from India’s cabinet, which approved roughly $251 million for the Chandrayaan 4 lunar sample return mission and approximately $155 million for ISRO’s Venus Orbiter Mission. Chandrayaan 4 could launch as soon as 2027 and test “foundational technologies” eventually needed for an Indian astronaut landing on the Moon, the press bureau said. A complex sample return mission is the “natural successor” to the successful Chandrayaan 3 landing in August 2023. “All the critical technologies are envisaged to be indigenously developed.” Elements for India’s lunar sample return mission will launch on two LVM3 rockets, then link up together in space. The Chandrayaan 4 landing craft will collect lunar soil and launch it back into lunar orbit to dock with an Earth-return vehicle. The Venus Orbiter Mission, scheduled for launch in March 2028, could be the next government-led mission to explore the hellishly inhospitable second planet from the Sun. NASA and the European Space Agency plan to launch probes to Venus in the early 2030s, and Rocket Lab is developing a privately funded probe to fly to Venus, although it doesn’t have a firm launch date. ISRO is also studying a robotic mission to land on Mars called Mangalyaan 2, but it wasn’t listed among the projects approved by the Indian government this week. India’s first successful foray into Solar System exploration was a Mars orbiter mission that arrived on the red planet in 2014.

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