Indian Space Station by 2035 – a wild gambit

A space station and a future human mission to the Moon – have been on the radar of the ISRO as some kind of dream project.

In a cryptic press release issued on October 18, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) announced that the Prime Minister has “directed that India should now aim for new and ambitious goals including setting up ‘Bharatiya Antariksha Station’ (Indian Space Station) by 2035” and send “an Indian to the Moon by 2040”.

While both – a space station and a future human mission to the Moon – have been on the radar of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) as some kind of dream project, this is the first official announcement with a timeline. The development has serious implications for the future course of ISRO.

How Other Space Stations Fructified

Space stations – orbiting modules for astronauts to live and work for long durations in space – moved from being sci-fi to reality when President Ronald Reagan directed NASA in 1984 to build a space station in ten years. The building blocks of the station were transported to space in several missions and it became a reality in 2000, not as a NASA project but as a collaborative venture of America, Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency. That’s how the International Space Station (ISS) was born.

China was kept out of ISS because of domestic American laws that prohibited NASA from direct collaboration with the Chinese. To build its own space station, China first had to master human space flights. In 2003, the first Chinese astronaut went to space. Over the next 20 years, China developed the building blocks needed for a crewed space station.

The Chinese space station, Tiangong, became operational in 2022. Russia’s continued participation in ISS after 2024 – when the present agreement ends – is also in doubt because of post-Ukraine geopolitics. Russia may build its own space station. With India announcing its space station, the era of collaboration may be replaced with competition.

India’s dramatic announcement is perplexing on several counts.

Inverting Established Precedent

First, it came from the political leadership and not from ISRO. This is important because the ideas of all major programmes of ISRO in the past 25 years – Chandrayaan, Mangalyaan, Aditya-L1 and Gaganyaan – emanated from within the agency.

They were subjected to the rigour of scientific and technical brainstorming within and outside ISRO, and only then funding was sought.

Chandrayaan-1 was discussed even by the concerned parliamentary standing committee and was supported by members of all political parties before the project was sent to the Prime Minister. The human space mission, Gaganyaan, underwent several rounds of technical review before the government approval. In the present case, the government has bypassed this robust process.

An Unrealistic Timeline?

Second, the ISS was built by space agencies which had decades of experience in human space flights. By the time NASA started working on the ISS it had landed humans on the Moon and Russia had the experience of several human space missions and its own station, Mir, in orbit from 1986 onward.

Still, ISS took 16 years to become functional. China could build a station 18 years after it sent its first astronaut to space. India is yet to send a human into space. As of now, the timeline for the Gaganyaan mission is 2025.

After that, India will have to undertake several manned and unmanned missions to transport station modules of its space station, assemble them, and finally make it habitable for astronauts to live there. All this should be done by 2035, as directed.

The Cost Factor

Third, the biggest question is the cost. The ISS, according to various estimates, cost 150 billion dollars to build. The Chinese station – which is much smaller than ISS (it has only 3 modules compared to 16 in ISS) – was built with about 10 billion dollars. NASA alone spends 3-4 billion dollars a year on the maintenance of the ISS.

The average cost of maintaining one astronaut on the ISS is 7.5 million dollars a day.  As of now, the size of the Indian space station is not defined, so it is difficult to estimate the cost.

But going by the experience of ISS and Tiangong, it could be several times the present budget of ISRO. Yesterday’s announcement made no mention of the cost nor any assurance of additional financial support to ISRO.

The big-ticket announcement is an indication that India is shifting to a policy of using space for technological and geopolitical supremacy – a departure from the path of using space technology for national development and scientific excellence. And, it is doing so without a clear pathway and discourse in the scientific community.

Dinesh C Sharma is a science journalist and author based in New Delhi. Views are personal, and do not represent the stance of this publication.