Special to CosmicTribune.com, September 25, 2024

Geostrategy-Direct

By Richard Fisher

On Sept. 18 India’s Union Cabinet, or senior executive branch, approved budgets for space programs amounting to $350.9 million (32,771 crore), that will advance India’s ambitions for manned space flight, a new small space station and manned missions to the Moon by 2040.

All of these efforts will better position India to be an active and contributing partner in the 43-country coalition of signers of the 2020 Artemis Accords for transparent and peaceful activities on the Moon, that India signed on June 21, 2024, as it will also better position India to defend its interests in the Earth-Moon system from the predations of China.

In early August India’s leading space organization, the India Space Research Organization (ISRO), announced that two Indian astronauts, Shubhanshu Shukla and Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, would soon travel to the Johnson Space Center of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to begin training for a mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

India’s Next Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV), now named “Soorya” by the ISRO, will receive about $92 million, to over the next 8 years produce a partially reusable space launch vehicle (SLV) that could send a payload of 30 to 70 tons to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) or up to 22.5 tons to the Moon.

Reusability has become the acme of next-generation SLVs in that it enables significant reductions in launch costs, as the fixed costs of the launcher can be recouped over multiple launches.

If successful, the NGLV/Soorya will be comparable in performance to China’s Long March-10, that is expected to be able to transport about 26 tons to the Moon and also feature a reusable first stage.

While India’s first indigenous manned mission to the Moon is planned for 2040, the Union Cabinet approved $23.5 million for the Chandraayan-4 unmanned Moon mission, that in about 3 years will be launched to gather and return a Moon sample to Earth.

In doing so, India will have to demonstrate that it can perform space docking, lunar soft-landing and lift-off, and atmospheric reentry, all skills that must be perfected in order to send astronauts to the Moon.

This would follow the example of multiple Chinese unmanned Moon sample return missions that have also helped China to perfects the skills needed for a manned Moon mission.

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