India's boom, Russia's crunch: how money is shaping a new space race
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[August 22, 2023]
By Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Joey Roulette
BENGALURU/
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The space race India aims to win this
week by landing first on the moon's south pole is about science, the
politics of national prestige and a new frontier: money.
India's Chandrayaan-3 is heading for a landing on the lunar south pole
on Wednesday. If it succeeds, analysts and executives expect an
immediate boost for the South Asian nation's nascent space industry.
Russia's Luna-25, which launched less than two weeks ago, had been on
track to get there first – before the lander crashed from orbit,
possibly taking with it the funding for a successor mission, analysts
say.
The seemingly sudden competition to get to a previously unexplored
region of the moon recalls the space race of the 1960s, when the United
States and the Soviet Union competed.
But now space is a business, and the moon's south pole is a prize
because of the water ice there that planners expect could support a
future lunar colony, mining operations and eventual missions to Mars.
With a push by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has privatized space
launches and is looking to open the sector to foreign investment as it
targets a five-fold increase in its share of the global launch market
within the next decade.
If Chandrayaan-3 succeeds, analysts expect India's space sector to
capitalize on a reputation for cost-competitive engineering. The Indian
Space Research Organization (ISRO) had a budget of around just $74
million for the mission.
NASA, by comparison, is on track to spend roughly $93 billion on its
Artemis moon program through 2025, the U.S. space agency's inspector
general has estimated.
"The moment this mission is successful, it raises the profile of
everyone associated with it," said Ajey Lele, a consultant at New
Delhi's Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses.
"When the world looks at a mission like this, they aren't looking at
ISRO in isolation."
RUSSIA'S CRUNCH
Despite Western sanctions over its war in Ukraine and increasing
isolation, Russia managed to launch a moonshot. But some experts doubt
its ability to fund a successor to Luna-25. Russia has not disclosed
what it spent on the mission.
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A view of the moon as viewed by the
Chandrayaan-3 lander during Lunar Orbit Insertion on August 5, 2023
in this screengrab from a video released August 6, 2023. ISRO/Handout
via REUTERS/File Photo
"Expenses for space exploration are systematically reduced from year
to year," said Vadim Lukashevich, an independent space expert and
author based in Moscow.
Russia's budget prioritization of the war in Ukraine makes a repeat
of Luna-25 "extremely unlikely", he added.
Russia had been considering a role in NASA’s Artemis program until
2021, when it said it would partner instead on China's moon program.
Few details of that effort have been disclosed.
China made the first ever soft landing on the far side of the moon
in 2019 and has more missions planned. Space research firm
Euroconsult estimates China spent $12 billion on its space program
in 2022.
NASA'S PLAYBOOK
But by opening to private money, NASA has provided the playbook
India is following, officials there have said.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX, for example, is developing the Starship rocket
for its satellite launch business as well as to ferry NASA
astronauts to the moon’s surface under a $3-billion contract.
Beyond that contract, SpaceX will spend roughly $2 billion on
Starship this year, Musk has said.
U.S. space firms Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines are building
lunar landers that are expected to launch to the moon's south pole
by year's end, or in 2024.
And companies such as Axiom Space and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin are
developing privately funded successors to the International Space
Station. On Monday, Axiom said it raised $350 million from Saudi and
South Korean investors.
Space remains risky. India’s last attempt to land failed in 2019,
the same year an Israeli startup failed at what would have been the
first privately funded moon landing. Japanese startup ispace had a
failed landing attempt this year.
"Landing on the moon is hard, as we’re seeing,” said Bethany Ehlmann,
a professor at California Institute of Technology, who is working
with NASA on a 2024 mission to map the lunar south pole and its
water ice.
"For the past few years, the moon seems to be eating spacecraft."
(Editing by Kevin Krolicki and Clarence Fernandez)
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