Mark Psiaki, left, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, hooks up an experimental GPS/Galileo digital storage receiver and patch antenna with the assistance of graduate students Todd Humphreys, center, and Shan Mohiuddin in Rhodes Hall. by Staff WritersIthaca NY (SPX) Jul 19, 2006Members of Cornell’s Global Positioning System Laboratory have cracked the so-called pseudo random number codes of Europe’s first global navigation satellite, despite efforts to keep the codes secret. That means free access for consumers who use navigation devices – including handheld receivers and systems installed in vehicles – that need PRNs to listen to satellites.The codes and the methods used to extract them were published in the June issue of GPS World.
The navigational satellite, called the GIOVE-A, for Galileo In-Orbit Validation Element-A, is a prototype for 30 satellites that by 2010 will constitute Galileo, a $4-billion joint venture of the European Union, European Space Agency and private investors. Galileo is Europe’s answer to the U.S. GPS system.
Because GPS satellites, which were put into orbit by the Department of Defense, are funded by U.S. taxpayers, the signal is free — consumers need only purchase a receiver. Galileo, on the other hand, must make money to reimburse its investors — presumably by charging a fee for PRN codes.
Because Galileo and GPS will share frequency bandwidths, Europe and the United States signed an agreement whereby some of Galileo’s PRN codes must be “open source.” Nevertheless, after broadcasting its first signals on Jan. 12, 2006, none of GIOVE-A’s codes had been made public.
In late January, Mark Psiaki, an aerospace engineer at Cornell and co-leader of the GPS Laboratory, requested the codes from Martin Unwin at Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd., one of three privileged groups in the world with the PRN codes.
“In a very polite way, he said, ‘Sorry, goodbye,'” recalled Psiaki. Next, Psiaki contacted Oliver Montenbruck, a friend and colleague in Germany, and discovered that he also wanted the codes. “Even Europeans were being frustrated,” said Psiaki. “Then it dawned on me: Maybe we can pull these things off the air, just with an antenna and lots of signal processing.”
Within one week Psiaki’s team developed a basic algorithm to extract the codes. Two weeks later they had their first signal from the satellite, but were thrown off track because the signal’s repeat period was twice that expected. By mid-March they derived their first estimates of the code, and — with clever detective work and an important tip from Montenbruck — published final versions on their Web site on April 1. Two days later, NovAtel Inc., a Canadian-based major manufacturer of GPS receivers, downloaded the codes from the Web site in a few minutes and soon afterward began tracking GIOVE-A for the first time.
Galileo eventually published PRN codes in mid-April, but they weren’t the codes currently used by the GIOVE-A satellite. Furthermore, the same publication labeled the open source codes as intellectual property, claiming a license is required for any commercial receiver. “That caught my eye right away,” said Psiaki. “Apparently they were trying to make money on the open source code.”
Afraid that cracking the code might have been copyright infringement, Psiaki’s group sought outside help. “We were told that cracking the encryption of creative content, like music or a movie, is illegal, but the encryption used by a navigation signal is fair game,” said Psiaki. The upshot: The Europeans cannot copyright basic data about the physical world, even if the data are coming from a satellite that they built.
“Imagine someone builds a lighthouse,” argued Psiaki. “And I’ve gone by and see how often the light flashes and measured where the coordinates are. Can the owner charge me a licensing fee for looking at the light? … No. How is looking at the Galileo satellite any different?”
Other authors of the GPS World article are Cornell colleagues Paul Kintner, Todd Humphreys, Shan Mohiuddin, Alessandro Cerruti and Steven Powell

New Horizons Crosses The Asteroid Belt

New Horizons has entered the main asteroid belt and will be traversing this part of our solar system through August. May, like April, was a busy month for New Horizons’ instrument payload commissioning. In particular, our instruments LORRI, PEPSSI, Alice and Ralph all continued their in in-flight checkouts.In addition, the spacecraft itself received a new suite of onboard fault-protection autonomy software, resolving a number of needed bug fixes discovered in ground and flight testing.
We continue to see software-induced guidance computer resets once or twice per month on average, but the spacecraft recovers flawlessly from these, without any interruption to plans. New software for this computer is in the works and will resolve the bug that causes this; we expect to have it tested and aboard the spacecraft around Oct. 1.
Highlights of our payload-commissioning activities included door openings for PEPSSI (May 3), Alice (May 20) and Ralph (May 29). The Student Dust Counter registered each of these events at the precise time of the door openings by the noise they made on the spacecraft.
Each of these instruments also saw first light, i.e., detecting signals from stars (Ralph) or the interplanetary medium (PEPSSI and Alice). From these tests we appear to have a little higher-than-spec sensitivity with Ralph’s color and panchromatic cameras.
We also found that Alice’s background counts are only about half of what we predicted, indicating the RTG induces a significantly lower background than we estimated before launch. This lower background rate will substantially enhance Alice’s signal-to-noise ratio on faint spectral features.
From the Alice, Ralph, and PEPSSI testing this month, we can continue to say, from all of the data surrounding the careful, step-by-step instrument-commissioning activities to date, that our instrument payload continues to look like it’s performing as well or better than predicted from ground testing. This is a testament to the exacting engineering that went into their development.
In other news for May, we began to finalize the suite of Jupiter observations planned for next year during our Jupiter flyby, and we continued to track New Horizons to determine whether a fine course correction will be needed this fall. So far, none appears necessary, but the final verdict won’t be in until we have about another 90 to 100 days of tracking.
Planning activities began in May for the 60 day checkouts we’ll perform each year during Cruise 2, also known as Glen’s Glide: the coast from Jupiter to Pluto.
From 2008 to 2011, these checkouts will occur in the fall of each year, but in 2012, 2013 and 2014 the checkouts will occur in the summer. The summertime checkouts will occur in 2012 and 2014 because we’ll be rehearsing the Pluto encounter aboard the spacecraft during these checkouts, and we want the Earth-Sun geometry at rehearsal time to reproduce faithfully what will occur at the encounter, in the summer of 2015. The 2013 checkout provides a backup opportunity for an additional rehearsal if one becomes necessary.
I’ll now turn to the “water cooler news story” of the month for New Horizons: In early May, we got word from Lockheed-Martin that tourists in the Bahamas found several large pieces of our Atlas V 551 launch vehicle’s nose fairing that had washed up on shore.
Now, turn to the significance of our current location: deep in the solar system’s main asteroid belt. This region comprises a handful of dwarf planets, such as Ceres – itself 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) in diameter – and literally millions of debris bits created by collisions between asteroids.
These small bodies range in size from mountains to objects as large as 100 kilometers (62 miles) across. The asteroid belt also contains innumerable boulders, rocks and dust motes created by the same collisions.
The first spacecraft to transit the asteroid belt was NASA’s Pioneer 10, which made its epic crossing in 1972 on the way to the historic first encounter of a spacecraft with Jupiter.
Later, Pioneer 11, Voyagers 1 and 2, Galileo, Cassini, NEAR and Ulysses have all made the same kind of journey across the main belt. Now it is our turn.
Fortunately, the asteroid belt is so huge that, despite its large population of small bodies, the chance of running into one is almost vanishingly small – far less than one in a billion. That means if you want to come close enough to an asteroid to make detailed studies of it, you have to aim for one.
The first such asteroid flyby was made by Galileo in October 1991, and Galileo made a second asteroid encounter in 1994.
Other spacecraft, most notably the NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) mission, also have made close main-belt-asteroid flybys, yielding important geological and geophysical insights into these bodies.
Galileo made the first discovery of an asteroid satellite in its 1991 flyby of Gaspra. Since then, ground-based observers have found dozens of asteroid satellites.
In addition to main belt asteroid flybys, NASA’s NEAR and the Japanese Hayabusa mission both have made orbital rendezvous and landings on asteroids closer to Earth.
Next year, NASA plans to launch the Dawn Discovery mission to orbit two of the largest asteroids: Vesta and Ceres. Dawn will arrive in orbit about Vesta in 2012, and will reach Ceres, the largest asteroid, in August 2015, just a month or so after New Horizons encounters Pluto.
A long time ago, we considered the possibility of targeting a close asteroid flyby with New Horizons during our main belt traverse. As the mission’s principal investigator, I rejected this early on for two reasons.
First, such an encounter would take about half of our Kuiper Belt fuel to accomplish. Second, even for this amount of fuel, the only asteroids we could hope to reach would be tiny – just a few kilometers across.
Though such an encounter certainly would be scientifically useful, it couldn’t be justified for the amount of fuel it would cost us – after all, our job is to reconnoiter bodies in the Kuiper belt with that fuel, not the asteroid belt.
As a result, we specifically decided not to target any asteroid, but after launch we did conduct a thorough search for chance encounters along our trajectory. Just the statistics of such chance encounters indicated that we might expect to pass perhaps 1 million to 3 million kilometers (620,000 to 1.8 million miles) from a small asteroid by chance as we transited the main belt. We found several such opportunities back in February.
As it turned out, we got more than what we expected: In early May we also discovered we’d pass within just 104,000 kilometers (63,000 miles) of the little-known asteroid 2002 JF56 on June 13. This little mountain-sized body is only 3 kilometers to 5 kilometers (1.9 miles to 3.1 miles) across, and virtually nothing is known about it – not even its compositional type or rotational period.
We cannot resolve something as small as 2002 JF56 from this distance with Ralph (LORRI, which has higher resolution cannot open its door until late August to guard against accidental Sun pointings), but the June 13 encounter with 2002 JF56 is still going to be useful to New Horizons.
The primary use of this distant flyby will be to test Ralph’s optical navigation and moving-target tracking capabilities. We also will be able to get a handle on the asteroid’s light curve, composition, phase curve, and perhaps even refine its diameter, if all goes as planned.
The event is really a flight test, so we aren’t guaranteeing anything but a best effort. If it works, you’ll see images that just barely resolve the asteroid into perhaps one or two pixels and perhaps a spectrum of this chip off some larger body.
More important, of course, we will gain some valuable experience that will yield benefits at both the Jupiter and Pluto flybys, so we’re excited to give this a try. Stay tuned, we’ll report on the results at mid-month on our Web site.
Other flight
activities for June will center on SWAP instrument testing, Ralph instrument calibrations and beam-mapping observations for our high gain antenna and REX (radio science) instrument.
By July Fourth, we’ll be 3 AU from the Sun. Although the sunlight there is still 100 times as strong as it is on the brightest day at Pluto, it’ll be about 10 times dimmer than at Earth’s orbit. Less than six months into a 114 month journey to Pluto, New Horizons is beginning to reach the cooler thermal conditions it was designed to thrive in!
That’s all I have for now. So, until next time, keep exploring.

ISRO And DRDO Deal Differently With Disastrous Launches
File photo: The doomed Agni-III missile.by Staff WritersNew Delhi, India (PTI) Jul 18, 2006It was a Black Sunday and an even worse Monday for India’s aerospace ambitions. Two much-hyped rocket systems – one the guided missile Agni-III, and another the GSLV-FO2 launch vehicle carrying a satellite – built by two famed institutions, (RDO and ISRO, landed in the sea, drowning with them years of effort and hundreds of crores of rupees.

It was a rare back-to-back failure and ISRO chairman Madhavan Nair was forthright on what could have gone wrong: “The pressure in one of the four strap-on motors dropped to zero and did not develop enough thrust, as a result the vehicle veered off the trajectory,” he said, adding that the failure was “a rarest phenomena”.

“One of the liquid strap-ons had a workmanship problem with the engine valve, leading to a shutdown after one second,” a source revealed.

Unlike ISRO, who even after the failure showed a genuine eagerness to share available information, there was total silence from the DRDO. An indifferent defense minister summed up the situation: “The take-off was successful … but there was some problem later.”
Repeated efforts to talk to DRDO officials in Hyderabad met with no success, though one scientist did say there could have been a “component flaw, but even that would be premature to say”.

ISRO and DRDO are studies in contrast, two high-profile organizations heavily funded by public money and trying to meet India’s goals of self-reliance in critical technology. The difference is one seems to have learned from its failures and has a brilliant track record, while the other seems lost.

Much of ISRO’s talent and innovation has been used by DRDO for its missile program, “but the spirit and resilience of ISRO was never transferred to DRDO even though conceptually there is proximity between the two,” said a scientist who has worked in both organizations.
What makes ISRO different? “The one great thing about ISRO is that it is extremely open, people are committed, they have faith in themselves and a failure is seen as a learning curve. Our reviews are open,” said ex-ISRO chairman U.R. Rao.

“Nowhere in the world will you find another organization like ISRO,” said another official. “Everything is done here from end to end. We do R&D; build satellites and launch vehicles; meet the specific requirements of our users and also process data.”
Of the 21 launches ISRO has attempted in India, only five have failed, the last in April 1994. This is a highly respected success rate, even globally. At DRDO, however, the missile program has been the only effort that has met with some success.

Now, with Agni-III’s failure, the Integrated Guided Missile Program, which began in 1983, has suffered a major setback. The Agni test, said DRDO sources, was supposed to give a technical push to the intercontinental missile program.

“DRDO has got into the problem of talking big and delivering little,” said a scientist, recalling how in 2003 the much touted short-range surface-to-air missile Trishul was dumped. DRDO had worked on it for 18 years and spent nearly Rs 300 crore. Other missiles in the IGM program – Akash and Nag (promised long ago and yet to be delivered) – already have consumed thousands of crores.

It is ironic the DRDO was set up to cut down on arms imports via indigenization. A few years ago, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam had spoken of 70 percent self-reliance in defense requirements by 2005. That date and year have passed, and India is still a long way away from that goal.

China To Develop Deep Space Exploration In 5 Years
China hopes to send its spacecraft beyond the moon
Beijing, China (SPX) Jul 20, 2006
A senior Chinese space agency official said Wednesday that China would actively plan its deep space exploration over the next five years, focusing on lunar and Mars exploration.

Sun Laiyan, administrator of the China National Space Administration, said China would study the distribution and utilization of lunar resources and terrestrial planetary science as well as exploring scientific measures for supporting mankind’s sustainable survival on Earth.

Key research areas will also include astronomy and solar physics, space physics and solar system exploration, micro-gravity sciences and space life science.
Sun urged Chinese scientists to increase their understanding of star and universe evolution through the observation and study of the sun and black holes.

In the next five years, Sun said, China will independently develop and launch an astronomical satellite.

China will advance its exploration of the integral behavior of the chain reaction of solar-terrestrial space, establish a space weather forecast pattern on which a weather support system for space flight safety and communication will be based, he told the 36th Scientific Assembly of the Committee on Space Research.

Sun said, “Priorities shall be given to innovative projects on major scientific problems, and the emphases will be laid on Sun-Earth space environment study, solar system exploration and space astronomy.”

Sun’s administration is striving to establish an open, fair and scientific competition system for the selection of all space science projects, he said.
“We need to avoid unorganized competition by publicly collecting and evaluating proposals, and carrying out feasibility studies,” Sun said.

“We’ll also encourage and support other countries to join in the programs initiated by China in space science, and Chinese scientists will participate in international space science programs,” the administrator said.

During the 11th Five-Year (2006-2010) Program period, research into micro-gravity science will be coordinated with national scientific and technological strategic objectives.
This will promote the development of high technology for biological engineering and new materials and basic research on gravity theory and life science.

Chinese scientists have already conducted space experiments in astronomy, environment, microgravity fluid physics, material science, life science and earth science.
In February 2004, China initiated the Lunar Exploration Mission and started the research and development of the Chang’e lunar probe.

In October 2005, Shenzhou VI for the first time operated manned space lab experiments. China also launched four recoverable satellites.The results achieved through many years of research have laid a foundation for the fulfillment of space science development goals set out in the 11th Five-Year Program. After over ten years of advanced research on Space Solar Telescope and Space Hard X-Ray Modulation Telescope, scientists have tackled problems on key technologies and manufactured models of main components.

It is estimated that in the past decade, China’s space science investment, including infrastructure and programs, had exceeded 900 million yuan ($112.5 million).
The National High-Tech Research and Development Program initiated in the mid 1980s and the Manned Space flight Program begun in 1992 substantially promoted the development of China’s space research.

The Official Press Release from the ISRO is below and it describes that the GSLV “cannot complete its mission” ie. putting the satelitte on orbit. But, as it came to know the Liquid strap-ons were (seems to be ) the reason for this hitch too., (as was in 1999).

PRESS RELEASE
Date Released: Monday, July 10, 2006
Source: Indian Space Research Organisation
India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-F02), with INSAT-4C on board, was launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR (SDSC SHAR), Sriharihota today (July 10, 2006).

The lift-off took place at 5:38 p.m. IST.
However, GSLV-F02 could not complete the mission.

The detailed analysis of the data received from the vehicle is being analysed to pinpoint the exact reasons.

The Anatomy of the ” Failure “
The second operational flight of the GSLV rocket that was to hurl the country’s heaviest satellite yet built , 36,000 km into space instead plunged into the sea, within a minute of launch from the country’s space port at Sriharikota.
One of the four strap-on motors, attached to the 49-metre-tall, 414 tonne GSLV did not give the required thrust forcing the rocket to deviate from its flight path by about 10 degrees. The project director, who found that the first stage did not separate from the upper two stages, pressed the button to destroy the rocket for safety reasons. “It appears from preliminary data that the pressure had dropped to zero in one of the four strap-on motors and it failed to give the required thrust to the GSLV,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman G Madhavan Nair said, after the mishap, the first major incident in 12 launches of the space agency.(considering 9 Succesful launches in Row with 6 Foreign Satelittes/Payloads)
Five years ago, the first experimental GSLV rocket had faced a pressure drop in one of the boosters, but the onboard computers aborted the rocket, barely two seconds before lift-off. ISRO top brass had then claimed that they had perfected the in-built safety systems to prevent a disaster.
On Monday it seemed like ISRO officials had a hint of a problem in the rocket, when they delayed the launch by almost one hour. But, they went ahead at 17:38 hours, to find television sets across the world beam the five-storeyed gigantic machine bursting into flames.
Post-Moterm:

But,The strap-on Boosters is belived to have developed a snag well before the launch, and according to some reliable sources, its actually the executive decession and the political will that made to go ahead with the launch even after the strapons developed some pressure loss., (meaning the motor used for pumping fuel din’t worked upto the mark.) (but the pride of completing the mission on the announced day seems to have rushed the decassion rather than wait for the saftey check to complete) all said and done, such accidents do happen and cannot be parted with, So i personally think the ISRO guys will come up with more robust and efficent “on-board ” security measures……

The Official Press Release from the ISRO is below and it describes that the GSLV “cannot complete its mission” ie. putting the satelitte on orbit. But, as it came to know the Liquid strap-ons were (seems to be ) the reason for this hitch too., (as was in 1999).

PRESS RELEASE
Date Released: Monday, July 10, 2006
Source: Indian Space Research Organisation
India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-F02), with INSAT-4C on board, was launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR (SDSC SHAR), Sriharihota today (July 10, 2006).

The lift-off took place at 5:38 p.m. IST.
However, GSLV-F02 could not complete the mission.

The detailed analysis of the data received from the vehicle is being analysed to pinpoint the exact reasons.

The Anatomy of the ” Failure “
The second operational flight of the GSLV rocket that was to hurl the country’s heaviest satellite yet built , 36,000 km into space instead plunged into the sea, within a minute of launch from the country’s space port at Sriharikota.
One of the four strap-on motors, attached to the 49-metre-tall, 414 tonne GSLV did not give the required thrust forcing the rocket to deviate from its flight path by about 10 degrees. The project director, who found that the first stage did not separate from the upper two stages, pressed the button to destroy the rocket for safety reasons. “It appears from preliminary data that the pressure had dropped to zero in one of the four strap-on motors and it failed to give the required thrust to the GSLV,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman G Madhavan Nair said, after the mishap, the first major incident in 12 launches of the space agency.(considering 9 Succesful launches in Row with 6 Foreign Satelittes/Payloads)
Five years ago, the first experimental GSLV rocket had faced a pressure drop in one of the boosters, but the onboard computers aborted the rocket, barely two seconds before lift-off. ISRO top brass had then claimed that they had perfected the in-built safety systems to prevent a disaster.
On Monday it seemed like ISRO officials had a hint of a problem in the rocket, when they delayed the launch by almost one hour. But, they went ahead at 17:38 hours, to find television sets across the world beam the five-storeyed gigantic machine bursting into flames.
Post-Moterm:

But,The strap-on Boosters is belived to have developed a snag well before the launch, and according to some reliable sources, its actually the executive decession and the political will that made to go ahead with the launch even after the strapons developed some pressure loss., (meaning the motor used for pumping fuel din’t worked upto the mark.) (but the pride of completing the mission on the announced day seems to have rushed the decassion rather than wait for the saftey check to complete) all said and done, such accidents do happen and cannot be parted with, So i personally think the ISRO guys will come up with more robust and efficent “on-board ” security measures……

India Cancels Agni III Test

The Agni III (pictured) is said to be able to deliver a 440-pound to 550-pound warhead with a high degree of accuracy.

The Indian government has decided to cancel the first test-firing of its Agni III inter-continental ballistic missile.

The Agni III was the pride of the Indian strategic missile program and was designed to have a range of at least 1,400 miles, and possibly as far as 2,000 miles, giving it the capability of hitting cities across southern China with nuclear weapons.

According to a report in Asia Times Online May 25, U.S. pressure may have played a role in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s decision to cancel the test, which has angered pro-military hawks in the Indian defense establishment and right-wing Hindu nationalists.

“The United States has always been very suspicious about India’s Agni program, and in 1994 persuaded it to suspend testing of (earlier, shorter-range versions of) the missile after three test flights,” theAsia Times Online report said. The U.S.-backed Missile Technology Control Regime seeks to prevent the proliferation of missiles capable of delivering an 1,100-pound payload over distances of more than 180 miles.

“Decisions concerning the country’s strategic program, including the development and testing of different classes of missiles, are based on technical factors and a continuous review and assessment of our overall security environment,” an Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.

The Agni III is said to be able to deliver a 440-pound to 550-pound warhead with a high degree of accuracy. The longest-range, surface-to-surface Agni III has reportedly been ready for launch for two years, but the tests have been repeatedly postponed, Asia Times Online said.

India’s military capabilities and arsenal are developed by the Defense Research and Development Organization which works in close coordination with space and nuclear-power institutions. “There is no doubt that it is the shadow of Washington and access to nuclear energy that finally tilted the scales against the Agni III.” the Asian Times Online report said

Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee has said that self-imposed “restraint” was behind India’s failure to test-fire the Agni III.

“Self-restraint does not mean that the DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organization) can’t go ahead with cold-bed tests for the missile’s subsystems,” he said.

However, Jane’s Defense Weekly noted on May 24 that Indian analysts have said Mukherjee’s “ambiguous” explanation was due to “sensitive and crucial” diplomatic and strategic talks with the United States and China. New Delhi did not want the Agni III to be a stumbling block during Mukherjee’s visit to Beijing this week. Missile tests could also hamper U.S. congressional ratification of the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement offered by the United States, Jane’s Defense Weekly said.

An Agni III test launch would also send the “wrong signals” to the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting in Rio de Janeiro in June, an Indian official told Jane’s.

However its understandable that the pro-nuclear hawks in the US is gunning for bush’s blood and specefically in this time when the crucial Indo-US civilian nuclear cooperation treaty is to be introduced in the senate, the reason behind the canceling of the test

Manned Spaceflight Plans For India To The ISS And Beyond

The Geostationary Launch Vehicle that ISRO has already successfully used three times can put at least two or three tons into low Earth orbit (LEO). From its launch site on the Bay of Bengal, it could reach the ISS with a reasonable load of fuel, water, or other supplies. This India Space Logistics Vehicle (ISLV) could be designed by India’s own space industry, with minimal help from the US or Russia, and prove to be far more cost effective than existing craft. Mumbai, India (SPX) Jan 16, 2006India is at a crossroads in its national space development program, having to decide if it will invest more of its small budget on manned space flight – which could be very lucrative, long-term, but which depends on certain conditions beyond its present control- or on continued robotic and scientific missions designed to benefit national development goals.Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chairman, G Madhavan Nair, recently announced that his country will decide in a year’s time on whether to develop a manned space mission.
“We have to first decide how far such a manned mission is beneficial and whether we can afford to remain without it. Only a national debate can throw up answers for a consensus to go for a manned mission,” he said. Such a program is expected to cost up to Rs 15,000 to 20,000 crore.
“We need to develop a lot of new technologies to build a life-supporting system, a space capsule with safety features to survive, and a recovery operation to complete the mission. If it is decided, then we do not want to lag behind in our preparations,” Nair said, adding it will take at least seven to eight years for the agency to prepare for the mission.
An un-manned mission, by comparison, would cost around Rs 3000 crore, “therefore, it has to be debated and decided whether it is worthwhile to go on with a manned mission, when the same can be achieved by robotic instruments,” he added.
India sent its first astronaut, Rakesh Sharma (the 138th astronaut to go into space), aboard the Soviet spacecraft Salyut 7 in April 1984, while another astronaut, the Indian-American Kalpana Chawla (who flew into space on board the Challenger twice), was killed along with six others in the Columbia shuttle disaster in February on February 1, 2003.
The United States offered to include an Indian astronaut in future manned-space missions during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington, in July 2005, but haven’t made any further commitments yet.
“ISRO is still reviewing the possibility of sending an Indian astronaut in the US-backed International Space Mission. But so far no such proposal has been drafted”, Mr Nair also said recently.
If an Indian citizen were to visit the ISS, alleged areas of study would include protein synthesis, aerobic cell cultivation and efficacy of yogic exercises under micro gravity.
Since the Soviets orbited Rakesh Sharma in 1984, India has refocussed its space activities on finding ways to use space technology for the direct benefit of India’s national development goals. As India becomes a greater player in the global economy, though, ISRO’s policy is changing – with the Chandrayaan 1 moon probe a sign, perhaps, that India is aiming at becoming a full-fledged space power with civilian, commercial, military, and even human space capabilities.
The key to helping India build its human spaceflight program is the United States’ role in the ISS partnership. As an apparent new long-term strategic and economic partner of the US, it’s in America’s national interest to see India develop some of its space activities in close cooperation with the US.
President Bush has committed the US to finishing the ISS assembly process by around 2010, which it will then use for human spaceflight research, until about 2015, after which, it plans to stop funding ISS operations and concentrate on the human exploration of the Moon and Mars.
There are no official US plans for the ISS after this date but it seems unlikely that America’s partners would abandon the complex. It is probable that, within the next few years, negotiations will begin covering the long-term future of the ISS, whereby the US might consider handing over to India some of its ownership rights in the ISS. If this happens, one could expect future ISS crews to include at least one Indian astronaut.
After 2015 the ISS partnership will have to evolve into something quite different from what it is today. The US will fade into the background while the Russians, Japanese and Europeans will share the leading roles. India – and perhaps China – will have the chance to fill the void left by the Americans.
India would earn its stake in the ISS by developing and building an automated logistics spacecraft, like Russia’s Progress or Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV).
The Geostationary Launch Vehicle (GSLV) that ISRO has already successfully used three times can put at least two or three tons into low Earth orbit (LEO). From its launch site on the Bay of Bengal, it could reach the ISS with a reasonable load of fuel, water, or other supplies. This India Space Logistics Vehicle (ISLV) could be designed by India’s own space industry, with minimal help from the US or Russia, and prove to be far more cost effective than existing craft.
India may even want to design the ISLV so that it could evolve to deliver cargo anywhere within cislunar space, including, eventually, the surface of the Moon. A low-cost, Earth-to-Moon supply carrier, launched by a future version of the GSLV, might be a valuable business niche for India’s future, giving the country a strong claim for participation in the Vision for Space Exploration.