India will launch its first space mission to Mars in October 2013,
according to President Pranab Mukherjee, as the South Asian giant joins
rivals U.S., Russia, Japan and China in the race to the red planet.
At a cost of some 4.5-billion rupees ($83-million), India will send
an unmanned space vehicle to orbit Mars, Reuters reported. The craft,
which will be manufactured completely in India, will take nine months to
reach the planet and then enter into an orbit about 310 miles from the
surface in order to collect data on its climate and geology.
An Indian space official told Indian media that methane sensors will be used to predict the possibility of life on the planet.
"The
mission is ready to roll," Deviprasad Karnik, a scientist from the
India Space Research Organisation (ISRO), told Reuters from Bangalore.
President Mukherjee told parliament in New Delhi that several space
missions are planned for 2013, including the “launch of our first
navigational satellite."
“The space program epitomizes India’s scientific achievements and benefits the country in a number of areas,” Mukherjee said.
India’s space program is over 50 years old – five years ago, the
Chandrayaan satellite found evidence of water on the moon (where India
seeks to land a wheeled rover by 2014).
Karnik told the Wall Street Journal: "There is no provision in the
current [Indian] Mars program for a vessel to land on the planet.”
The Indian space agency will conduct a total of ten space missions by November 2013, at a cost of about $1.3-billion.
However, some critics charge that the Indian government should spend
its money to fight malnutrition, tackle widespread poverty, provide safe
and clean drinking water and fix infrastructure on terra firma rather
than take trips to other planets.
The blackout, which turned out the lights for some 600-million people
last year and represented the biggest power outage in human history,
symbolized the country’s crumbling energy infrastructure and desperate
need for upgrades.
Jean Drèze, a development economist at the Delhi School of Economics,
complained to the Financial Times: "I don't understand the importance
of India sending a space mission to Mars when half of its children are
undernourished and half of all Indian families have no access to
sanitation.”
He suggested that the space mission is "part of the Indian elite's delusional quest for superpower status."
Last August, an editorial in Times of India, cautioned that India’s
space ambitions should have pragmatic and realistic objectives, rather
than reflect a “false sense of national pride.”
"More attention needs to be paid to the poor on issues such as
health, drinking water and literacy," Bindeshwar Pathak, a prominent
welfare activist, told Agence France Presse. "Going to space might have
some scientific benefits but it alone will not help the condition of
India's poor."
According to the World Bank, one-third of Indians live below the
poverty line, while the UN said that one-third of the world’s
malnourished children live in India.
Krishan Lal, President of the Indian National Science Academy,
commented on the relative strangeness of India seeking to explore Mars.
“India is a country which works on different levels. On the one
hand, we have a space mission, on the other hand a large number of
bullock carts,” he said.
“You can’t, say, remove all the bullock carts, then move into space. You have to move forward in all directions.”
Source : IBTIMES ( 22nd Feb 2013 )
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