Chandrayaan-2 not end of story, human spaceflight plans on track: Isro

The Indian Space Research Organisation will put in all efforts to demonstrate soft landing in space in the near future and Chandrayaan-2 is not the end of story, Isro chief K Sivan said on Saturday.
He said a large number of advance satellite launches are planned in the coming months.

"You all have heard about Chandrayaan-2 mission. On the technology part yes, we could not achieve soft landing, but all the systems functioned until 300m from Moon's surface. Very valuable data is available to set things right. Let me assure that Isro will pull all its experience, knowledge and technical prowess to set things right and demonstrate soft landing in near future," Sivan said in his address at the golden jubilee convocation of IIT Delhi.
"Chandrayaan-2 is not the end of story. Our plans on Aditya L1 solar mission, human spaceflight programme are on track. A large number of advance satellite launches are planned in the coming months. SSLV will make its maiden flight sometimes in December or January. Testing of 200 ton semi-cryo engine is expected to begin shortly. Work is on to provide NAVIC signals on mobile phones, which will open the path to develop large number of applications for societal needs," he added.
Asserting that IITs are the "holy grail" of technical education in India, Sivan said when he graduated from IIT Bombay more than three decades ago, the job scenario was not as vibrant as today.
"Area of specialisation limited the career options. Today, the options are many. There is an added volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity about the global economy. However, you all are much smarter and aware about these scenarios than the older generations," he said.
The ISRO chief advised the students to chose the career options wisely.
"Keep in mind that, there is only one life and there are many career options. You all need to identify your passion and natural talent and align your career. Choose an industry that reflects your passion and interests. Rather than choosing a job for money, choose it for your happiness.
"Be good at what you do. Remember, passion is not the only ingredient needed for success. You also need skills and strengths. You might be passionate about music or cricket. But, do you have the talent and skill set to become successful in extremely competitive fields like music or sports?," he said.
One does not need to be a topper, super genius or have excellent grades to achieve a successful career, Sivan said.
"To be successful in your career, academics or business, you need not be super intelligent or a genius. You need not be the topper, you need not have excellent grades. All you need is focus by eliminating distractions and time-wasting activities," he said.
"And for god's sake, don't be a copycat. Just because, it is fashionable to be a stand-up comedian, can you be a comedian? The trick is to strive the right balance between what you love and what you are good at. You can always be passionate about music and be a competent engineer, together ," he added.
Before the convocation address, the ISRO chief signed an MoU with IIT Delhi for setting up a Space Technology Cell (STC) at the institute.
With this, IIT Delhi will join the league of other premiere institutions like
IISc Bangalore, IIT Bombay, etc. where the STCs have been set up to play a major role in taking up the space technology research and applications to the newer heights.
A total of 1,217 postgraduate and 825 undergraduate students were awarded degrees at the convocation besides the distinguished alumni awards.

Chandrayaan-2 is a set back, but not a failure, say Isro officials

Isro officials said on Saturday that losing contact with Chandrayaan2's lander and and rover was a setback and not a failure.
Officials, who are analysing data to determine the reasons behind the setback, said that while it was impossible to retrieve the lander (Vikram) and the rover (Pragyan), only 5 per cent of the mission was lost. The remaining 95 per cent of the mission - the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter - was still orbiting the moon successfully.

The orbiter will take pictures of the moon, and probably even of the lander, and transmit them to ISRO, where they will be analysed.
In the early hours of Saturday, communication from Vikram lander to ground stations was lost when it was at an altitude of 2.1 kms ábove the lunar surface, while attempting a soft landing.
Meanwhile, across the social media, millions have backed Isro through the #ProudofIsro campaign on Twitter. The list includes the President of India, the prime minister, the home minister and some of the corporate heads.
"India is proud of our scientists! They’ve given their best and have always made India proud. These are moments to be courageous, and courageous we will be! Chairman @isro gave updates on Chandrayaan-2. We remain hopeful and will continue working hard on our space programme," Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted. He also addressed Isro scientists on Saturday morning and was seen consoling an emotional Isro Chairman, K Sivan.
"ISRO’s achievement with getting Chandrayaan-2 so far has made every Indian proud. India stands with our committed and hard working scientists at @isro. My best wishes for your future endeavors," said home minister Amit Shah in a tweet.
Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra in his tweet said, "The communication isn’t lost. Every single person in India can feel the heartbeat of #chandrayaan2. We can hear it whisper to us that ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’"
"The path to success will have pit falls but effort n endurance will clear the path n succeed we will. ISRO scientists will figure it out. The orbiter is a great sign of their scientific success," said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairperson and managing director, Biocon.

The best is yet to come in our space programme; India is with you: PM Modi

PM Modi addressing ISRO scientists at ISRO. Photo: ANI
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday asked ISRO scientists not to get disheartened by the hurdles in the moon mission Chandrayaan-2 and asserted that there will be a "new dawn and better tomorrow".
ISRO's plan to soft land Chandrayaan-2's Vikram module on the Lunar surface did not go as per script in the early hours of Saturday, with the lander losing communication with ground stations during its final descent.
Modi delivered a message of optimism, solidarity and hope to scientists in an address, which was broadcast live, hours after the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced that it had lost communication with the lander.
The nation is proud of them and stands with them, he said.
"We came very close but we need to cover more ground in the times to come. Learning from today will make us stronger and better. The nation is proud of our space programme and scientists. The best is yet to come in our space programme. There are new frontiers to discover and new places to go. India is with you," Modi said.
"Effort was worth it and so was the journey. It will make us stronger and better. There will be a new dawn and better tomorrow... I am with you, nation is with you," he added.
The prime minister sought to lighten the mood in the moments of disappointment for scientists, saying the moon has been so much romanticised in poems and literature that Chandrayaan in its last steps ran to embrace it, a reference to the Vikram's failure to lower its speed as planned during its descent to the planet.
This is how poets will describe it, he said, adding that the will to touch the moon has now become stronger and more intense.
Modi had earlier watched the proceedings as the lander began its descent towards the moon's surface at an ISRO centre here.
The prime minister began his near 25-minute speech, delivered in a mix of Hindi and English, with "Bharat mata ki jai" (Hail Mother India) slogan and said he could understand the feelings of scientists a few hours earlier when it became clear that Chandrayaan-2's final journey did not go as per plan.
"Your eyes said a lot and I could read the sadness on your face. I have lived those moments with you," he said, adding that this was why he did not stay for long with them in the early hours and came back in the morning, not to preach them but to be inspired by them.
He was also seen hugging and consoling a visibly disappointed and emotional ISRO chief K Sivan.
"When the message of communication cut-off with the mission was received, you were all shaken," Modi said, as he sought to lift their morale, asserting that it will strengthen their resolve for future successes.
Modi also recalled a number of ISRO's successful missions, including the one for Mars, to assert that there is no failure in science but only experiments and efforts.
There will be many more opportunities to be proud of and rejoice, he said, adding that ISRO scientists do now draw lines on a butter cake but on stone.
"You came as close as you could, look ahead," he said.
There have been disappointing moments in the past but they have not crushed our spirits, he said, adding that "the effort was worth it and so was the journey".
He called ISRO an "encyclopedia of successes" and said a few moments of halt cannot push its flight "out of trajectory" and that no hindrance can stop India from realising its dreams and aspiration in the 21st century.
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Chandrayaan-2's lander, Vikram, leaves orbiter for the Moon's surface

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) on Monday successfully separated the lunar lander, Vikram, from the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter. This was a major milestone in the mission.
The separation was done at 1:15pm on Monday.

The lander will travel towards the lunar surface, leaving the orbiter, which will remain in orbit for one year, to continue to revolve around the Moon.
On Sunday, Isro had successfully carried out Chandrayaan-2's fifth and final orbit manoeuvre to refine its circular path around the Moon.
Chandrayaan-2 consists of an orbiter, a lander and a rover. The 1.5-tonne lander carries the 27-kg rover. The mission of the lander is to soft-land on the lunar South Pole and to safely deploy the rover. The lander and the rover have a mission life of a single lunar day, or 14 days on the Earth.
The rover, Pragyan, has two devices to probe the elemental composition of lunar soil near its landing site and derive the elemental abundance there.
Chandrayaan-2's 384,000-km journey started on July 22 after the GSLV MkIII-M1 vehicle lifted off from Isro's spaceport at Sriharikota, near Chennai.

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Now, Isro will conduct a small manoeuvre for about three seconds to ensure that all the lander's systems are running normally.
On September 4, Isro will conduct the real manoeuvre for the lander for about six seconds. After checking the systems for three days, on September 7, at 1.40 am, the lander will begin propulsion, and at 1.55 am, it will land.
"It will be a terrifying moment as it is something Isro has not done before," said Isro Chairman K Sivan. He noted that globally, the success rate of a soft landing on the Moon is around 37 per cent. However, Isro is confident of landing smoothly as it has learnt from the mistakes of others and conducted enough tests and simulations.
Isro will employ throttlable control over the engine's thrusters, which is being attempted for the first time. One of the major challenges would be dust: Chandrayaan-2 will shield itself from the sharp, jagged-edged dust blowing up from the surface of the Moon during the landing with a few operational tweaks in the spacecraft. Just 13 metres before the landing, all the engines, except the one at the centre, will be switched off to avoid dust getting into the lander. The centre engine will only push the dust horizontally, thereby keeping the spacecraft risk-free in this regard.
The rover will then be rolled out to the surface of the Moon in nearly four hours, as it will move at a speed of 1 cm per minute. It will stay within 500 metres of the lander during its one-lunar-day mission.
The lander and rover have been tested extensively to survive the lunar night for the 14-Earth-day duration from September 7.
The lander and rover will carry out experiments to find water on the lunar surface and map for chemicals and topography. Isro has said that extensive mapping of the lunar surface to study variations in surface composition is essential to trace back the origin and evolution of the Moon.
The findings of these experiments will be helpful not only for India's future missions, but also for other missions, including NASA's, said Sivan, who added that past missions, including China's, were carried out close to the Equator.
The first data from the rover, Pragyan, will come through about 5.8 hours after landing.
While the battery will be exhausted after 14 days, if other systems are intact, once the next lunar day begins, the rover and lander could recharge their power systems and resume their work. However, Sivan said, "We cannot assure you that it will happen."

Women make up 30% of Chandrayaan-2 workforce, two lead the mission

Among the many firsts for the Chandrayaan 2, this mission would be the first for the space agency to have two women leading it as project and mission directors, with two decades of experience in Isro.
Besides, nearly 30 per cent of the members working on the Chandrayaan-2 mission are women, said K.Sivan, chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
Muthayya Vanitha, who will be the first women project director of Isro, is an electronics systems engineer and she has the responsibility of Chandrayaan-2 mission. Earlier she was responsible for data handling systems for India’s remote sensing satellites was reluctant to accept the historical responsibility.
M Annadurai, the project director for Chandrayaan-1 and who reportedly persued Vanitha, was quoted saying she has excellent problem-solving skills and team management capabilities, which are crucial for such projects.
Ritu Karidhal, mission director, holds a Master’s degree holder in Aerospace Engineering from Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. Karidhal she started her career in 1997 as an aerospace engineer at ISRO. She was the Deputy Operations Director for the Mars mission. In her role, she conceptualised and ensured the execution of the spacecraft’s onward autonomy system, an onboard system-level capability to make mission-relevant decisions without ground support.

ISRO's 47th PSLV mission to launch 28 nano satellites, countdown begins

A 27-hour countdown began Sunday for the launch of India's EMISAT satellite along with 28 nano satellites of global customers from Sriharikota Monday, a mission which would witness the ISRO placing payloads in three orbits and conducting space experiments for the first time.
The EMISAT satellite is aimed at electromagnetic measurement.

The countdown began at 6.27 am for the launch on board Indian Space Research Organisation's third generation workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), in its 47th flight, ISRO said.

The four-stage PSLV-C45 will blast off from the second launch pad at the spaceport of Sriharikota, about 125 kms from here, at 9.27 AM Monday, agency officials said.
The mission will mark several firsts to the credit of the space agency as it would manoeuvre satellites in various orbits and orbital experiments including on maritime satellite applications.
According to ISRO, a new variant of the rocket PSLV-QL equipped with four Strap-On motors in the first stage is used for the launch.
PSLV, also used in India's two key missions -- "Chandrayan" in 2008 and Mars Orbiter in 2013, is a reliable and versatile launch vehicle for ISRO with 39 consecutive successful flights till June, 2017 and five-in-a row from January 2018.
The rocket has encountered only two failures so far -- its maiden developmental flight ended unsuccessful way back in 1993. In September, 2017 the flight went off without any hitch but the IRNSS-1H Satellite could not be released into orbit after the PSLV-C39's heat shield failed to open on reaching the orbit.
In Monday's mission, ISRO scientists would place the satellites and payloads in three different orbits, a first for the agency.
After injecting the 436 kg primary satellite EMISAT, intended for electromagnetic spectrum measurement, at around 17 minutes from lift off in a 749 km orbit, they would restart the fourth stage again.
During this initiative, all the other 28 customer satellites, totally weighing about 220 kgs, would be released by lowering the fourth state to around 504 kms orbit.
Again, the fourth stage would be reignited and further lowered to 485 kms orbit to serve as an orbital platform for carrying out space borne experimentations for the first time in ISRO's history.
According to ISRO, this is the first time it has been envisaged to provide a micro-gravity environment for research organisations and academic institutes to perform experiments.
The PS4-fourth stage hosts three payloads in this mission.
They are automatic identification system from ISRO for Maritime satellite applications capturing messages transmitted from ships.
Automatic Packet Repeating System from AMSAT (Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation), India to assist amateur radio operators in tracking and monitoring position data.
Advanced Retarding Potential Analyzer for lonospheric Studies (ARIS) from Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) for the structural and composition studies of ionosphere.
The other 28 international satellites -- 25 3U type, two 6U type and one 2U type nano satellites -- are from Lithuania (two), Spain (1), Switzerland (1) and the United States (24).
All these satellites are being launched under commercial arrangements, ISRO said.
The previous launches by ISRO this year include the imaging satellite Microsat-R for military purpose along with 1.2 kg Kalamsat in January onboard PSLV-C44.
In February, ISRO launched India's communication satellite GSAT-31 from the European launch service provider Ariane from French Guiana.

We aim to double our revenue in next 5 years: Isro's Antrix Corporation CMD

While India has achieved feats which could be envious to many other countries in terms of space missions, the percentage share of Indian commercial offerings is very low compared to the total business volume in the sector across the world, which is at around $335 billion.
However, India has all the technologies available. The mismatch is in terms of the spare capacity available to offer to the global space commerce and Isro is in the process of addressing it with an increasing industry participation and innovations.
Antrix Corporation, the commercial arm of Isro, is expecting these efforts will help it to mop up over 10 per cent market share in the space commerce industry in next few years.
In an interaction with T E Narasimhan, Antrix Corporation Chairman-cum-Managing Director Rakesh Sashibhusan speaks about the opportunities, challenges and targets of India’s Space Commerce business. Edited Excerpts:
What are the opportunities and challenges as a service provider?
The opportunity is that India being a major space-faring nation has all the technologies related to this sector. An Indian company can leverage these technologies by working with Isro. Antrix is coming out with programmes like outsourcing of small satellite technology and others in this regard.
Learning will be easier for the industry because of Isro. They can use it to get a small portion of the market. Since launch services are available in India, many companies in other parts of the world are interested to outsource the assembly and launching of satellites to India. It will be very cost effective and can help India become a satellite manufacturing hub. We are going forward with this vision to improve satellite business in India.
What is the gameplan?
Today, there is a gap between demand and launch due to capacity constraints of launchers.
The small rockets and PSLV technologies of Isro are in the process of being outsourced to the industry. They will have a major role in manufacturing it, which means we have a full loop available and only the payload part will be there, which we will address later. This will generally address the requirement of many companies around the world, putting up various applications and satellites in the space.
You have mentioned that your commercial launches are slightly lower. Where do you see it going forward?
The aim of developing small satellites is to capture a larger share of this business, which is expected to touch $18 billion in the next 10 years.
This is a huge market and if you are able to position a particular launch vehicle with appropriate pricing in the market, you can definitely capture a percentage share of it.
Even if you look at a 10 per cent of this market, it is a huge amount. With the kind of capacities that we are planning, probably we should be able to generate Rs 15-20 billion revenue from the small satellite launch services alone.
In addition, Isro's big launch vehicles, when in production mode, will also help us increase our revenue and market share.
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Experts says medium launch vehicle will be a good bet for future if you want to be cost effective, instead of going for the small launcher. What is your take?
We are doing that market study. The small rockets are not that small as they will be able to take multiple satellites into orbit. We are also looking to launch microsatellites and cube sats with this particular launch vehicles. You will see that with this kind of launch vehicle we will be able to offer a very attractive proposition to the market.
Currently, you have a 7 per cent market share in launch services. Will the small rockets and PSLV marketing plan help you to increase this share?
The market size of launch services currently is about $5.5-6 billion globally, and it is supposed to grow at double digits in the near future. We have an immediate target of 10 per cent in the small satellite launch sector. We will lay out further plans after analysing the available opportunities.
The growth in terms of launch services market share is to be seen, but the 10 per cent market share in small launch vehicle service itself will take the seven per cent market share to more than 10 per cent. Our other programmes including the GSLV, GSLV Mark-III all looks good.

ALSO READ: Isro working on smaller satellite launch vehicles with up to 700 kg payload
The production of GSLV Mark-III will decide the kind of market share we can capture, along with the pricing. We are seeing a very good potential in the market and that will help us in accelerating beyond that 10 per cent market.
What about the satellite services market?
It is upto Isro to put the space capacity in place. The roadmap looks very good and once the roadmap comes up we will look at the capacity that we can make use of for commercial utilisation.
What is your vision for Antrix in next five years?
In five years, we would like to double our revenue. Currently, it is Rs 20 billion. We have laid out plans to double the revenue and capture a larger share in the market. It is for that only that we are working on capacity building, transferring technology etc. We have to have the ecosystem so that we can take care of the demands which are being generated around the world. Capacity building is the priority now.