The Asian Space Race

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Two weeks ago, India launched its Mangalyaan mission to Mars.  The mission, which will take ten months to reach Mars, is intended to study the Martian atmosphere and conduct scientific tests to determine if any forms of life exist on the Red Planet.  If India’s mission is successful, it would become the first Asian nation to launch a successful Martian mission and it would become the first nation to successfully reach Mars in its first mission attempt.  Success would also increase the prominence of the Indian space program, which launched a successful lunar mission in 2008.  Since China is considered the preeminent space power in Asia, having already placed a men and women in Earth’s orbit and having more powerful rockets than India, analysts are speculating that India’s Mars mission could inaugurate a space race between both powers, setting the tone for twenty-first century space exploration.

This topic brief will describe India’s Mars mission and compare it to other Asian nations that have pursued a space exploration, assess how the Mars mission can enhance India’s international profile, and then assess the status of the Asian space race.

Readers are also encouraged to use the links below and in the related R&D to bolster their files about this topic.

The Mangalyaan Mission

India has been preparing a Mars mission for the last fifteen months and the mission was put together by India’s space agency, which is called the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).  ISRO started from humble beginnings.  Time on November 5^th noted that ISRO began in the 1960s from a local church and used a cowshed as its laboratory.  Bloomberg on November 3^rd mentions that India launched its first space rocket in1 963 and its first satellite in 1975.  As India’s economy has grown over the last several decades, the Indian government has invested heavily in its space program.  The Times of India on November 10^th explains that ISRO’s annual budget is $1.1 billion a year, but this still pales in comparison with the NASA program.  If both budgets were compared with each other, ISRO’s budget would be only 1/17^th of NASA.  This budget disparity has forced ISRO to work on low cost missions and the Mangalyaan mission, which means Mars-craft in Hindi, costs a record low $73 million.  In comparison, the next NASA mission to Mars, MAVEN, which launched Monday, costs ten times as much, with a price tag of $679 million.

India launched a successful moon mission in 2008.  This mission, which NASA provided some assistance, went into lunar orbit and surprised the world by finding evidence of water on the moon.  This was a new finding that past lunar missions had missed.  The BBC on November 4^th notes that the Indian government sees the Mars mission as a natural progression from its lunar mission and it hopes that the Mars mission can uncover facts that past missions to Mars have missed.  India is not the only Asian nation to partake in a lunar mission, as Japan and China have also sent satellites, but the Indian lunar mission unearthed new scientific discoveries that gave the nation global attention.

The Mangalyaan mission will take ten months to reach Mars. The BBC article previously cited explains that India’s rockets are not as powerful as China’s and China’s rockets can lift four times the amount of weight as India’s.  The Guardian on November 4^th writes that India’s most powerful rocket, which was supposed to launch the Mangalyaan mission, failed.  As a result, India is having to use an interesting flight path whereby they are sending the Mars vehicle into Earth’s orbit for twenty days to build up speed to escape Earth’s gravitational pull.  Escaping Earth’s gravitational pull has been a problem for many past Mars missions.  NASA points out that the U.S., Russia, and the European Union have sent a combined forty missions to Mars, but only eighteen of them succeeded.  The Christian Science Monitor notes on November 5^th that Japan’s attempt at reaching Mars failed in 1998 and China’s attempt failed in 2011.  The Wall Street Journal of November 3^rd explained that the Chinese Yinghuo-1 satellite that was set to reach Mars was assisted by a Russian rocket, but that it was unable to leave Earth’s orbit and ended up as a failure.  Shortly after the failure of China’s mission the Indian government made the Martian mission a priority, recognizing that there might be some prestige in reaching the Red Planet before the Chinese.  The Chinese government has said that it will not try another Mars mission until 2016 at the earliest.

If India’s Mars mission succeeds in getting out of Earth’s orbit, it is expected to reach Mars in September of next year.  The mission will enter an elliptical orbit, which as CNN notes on November 5^th, will bring it within 360 kilometers of Mars at its closest point and 80,000 kilometers at its farther point.  The mission will do tests in the Martian atmosphere and will also look at the Martian surface and its topography.  While some Indian scientists hope to replicate the surprise of its lunar mission, some in the scientific community are skeptical.  Foreign Policy blasts the idea of a Martian mission on November 4^th by saying that NASA’s Curiosity mission has already ruled out the possibility of life on Mars and CNN argues that the elliptical orbit that the Mangalyaan mission will take is inadequate for making good observations of the Mars surface.

India’s International Profile

Having a viable space program is one of the hallmarks of a global superpower, although concerns on Earth have often trumped exploring the solar system since the United States reached the moon in 1969.  The Washington Post on October 29^th quoted Dean Cheng, a scholar at the Heritage Foundation, who argued that a nation cannot make a claim that they have moved beyond mid-level status in the international community until they have a space program.  After its lunar mission, India illustrated its capabilities and The Times of India on November 10^th argued that India is in a group of the top six space-faring nations in the world, along with the United States, Russia, China, and France.  The Mangalyaan mission means a great deal to the Indian people, who watched its launch on the island of Chennai and on television.  Getting to the Red Planet would give the nation bragging rights over other developing nations and could give a political boost to Manmohan Singh’s government, which is presiding over an ailing economy and corrupt political system.

Due to India’s domestic problems there have been criticisms that it should be spending its population and not the space program.  The Wall Street Journal previously cited explains that 350 million people in India live on less than $1.25 a day and that one-third of the country lacks access to electricity.  The BBC on November 9^th mentions that India also has a problem with street children, as poor children choose to roam the streets rather than live in shelters and are content to sift through rubble to make a day-to-day existence.  However, these children are susceptible to gangs and pedophiles and they usually acquire drug addictions.  Additionally, The Guardian says that 50% of the population does not have toilets, 40% of children in the country are malnourished, and 600 million people in the country were recently hit by an awful power cut.  The previous Bloomberg article also explains that India’s space program costs half of what it takes to provide free school lunches and nutrition programs for children under the age of six.

In response to these criticisms, Indians have argued that they are racist claims by a fading Western world.  They argue that any nation can undertake space travel if they desire to do so.  They also note that all nations have poverty problems, including the United States and Russia, and yet they partake in space exploration.  The financial arguments that are facing India were the same that faced the United States during the late 1950s and 1960s when it was engaged in the space race.  Senator Walter Mondale, a future vice-president, was a staunch opponent of the space program and tried to use the Apollo 1 disaster to kill the program.  The UK Telegraph of November 5^th echoes the Indian government’s argument for its space program by writing that a successful space program can inspire its scientists and provide breakthroughs for the country’s satellite industry.  U.S. News and World Report on November 5^th explains that the continued success of the country’s space industry can provide high-tech jobs and provide needed economic development.  After all, 16,000 scientists work at ISRO right now and a successful space program could provide a reason for educated Indians to return to their country to participate in scientific work.  Another justification that India provides for the space program is found in The Christian Science Monitor cited previously when it argued that the expense of the space program is only 0.8% of its national budget, which is the cost four big Bollywood movies.  Finally, India has used many of its current satellite technologies to assist its population, using them to expand internal communications networks and provide remote healthcare and education services.  Indian politicians point out that advanced weather satellites have allowed it to identify powerful cyclones and that this helped when Cyclone Phailin struck India last month.  Due to advanced warnings, hundreds of thousands of Indians were relocated and less than 100 people were killed.  This was far less than other cyclones, which have struck without warning and devastated low lying areas, resulting in thousands of deaths.

An Asian Space Race?

The major issue that extempers should keep an eye on is whether India’s Mars mission succeeds and if it does, what impact that has on Sino-Indian relations.  The Chinese consider themselves the prominent space power in Asia and there are several reasons that this assessment is correct.  First, China has successfully sent astronauts into Earth’s orbit, something that no other Asian nation has yet done.  Second, its rocket technology is more advanced than other Asian nations and its booming economy has allowed the government to concentrate resources on space exploration.  Third, the Chinese, according to Hindu on November 6^th, are only the third country to conduct a docking exercise in space and they plan to launch their own space station in 2020.  All of these developments illustrate that the Chinese government has its sights on establishing a strong space presence and the international community has taken note of this.  While the Chinese government has argued that India has a right to participate in peaceful space travel, it would likely consider a successful Indian Martian mission as a setback for its space program and may accelerate plans to reach the Red Planet faster than 2016.

When Dean Cheng argues that nations are seeking to go above mid-level status by having a space program he is correct and India is not alone in pursuing space exploration.  The South China Morning Post of November 6^th reveals that in Asia, Japan and South Korea have advanced programs and Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam are expanding their programs.  The Economist of November 4^th notes that non-Asian nations like Nigeria, Bolivia, and Belarus have also made it a goal to establish a presence in space.  One of the fears is that if China and India get into a rivalry over their space exploration efforts that it could create a more militaristic atmosphere for future space efforts.  In 2007, China alarmed the international community by successfully destroying a satellite and India and China could take their geopolitical competition in Asia to the next level.  Both nations are seeking raw materials for their economies and burgeoning populations and some believe that their space exploration is predicated on acquiring these resources.  The South China Morning Post writes that there are significant dangers in making space a militarized zone and that China and India could do more to help each other by cooperating.  This is what the United States and the Soviet Union did in the 1970s after the United States reached the moon.  Therefore, extempers should pay attention to the signals that China and India are sending each other about their space programs.  Although both nations signal that there is not a space race between them that could change if India successfully reaches Mars.

An Asian space race between India and China might be overrated in the sense that India has focused more of its mission on satellite technology instead of manned missions.  The Economist of November 2^nd explained that India had dreams of putting an astronaut into space in 2016, but scrapped those plans because of cuts in government spending and slowing economic growth.  The Times of India noted that ISRO has found a way to profit from launching satellites for other nations, which include France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, South Korea, Indonesia, Argentina, Israel, Canada, Denmark, Japan, and the Netherlands through its commercial arm Antrix.  The low cost of India’s Mars mission could provide a way for Western nations to outsource some of their future space projects.  This could provide a valuable way for India to fund its space program and find a niche in the global space market, whose estimated value is over $300 billion.

Nevertheless, if a space race does occur it would be interesting to see how this would impact the United States, whose space program has suffered cuts under the Obama administration.  NASA has spent recent years sending robot missions to Mars and worked with the International Space Station.  There are some elements of the space community, like Dr. Neal deGrasse Tyson, that want to bring back the manned space program and return to the moon and potentially go to Mars.  They argue that the manned space program could reignite interest in science and technology.  However, they recognize that the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s occurred because of the military necessities and propaganda value of the Cold War.  If India and China are seen as surpassing the United States in space, though, it is possible that it could provide a boost for NASA’s funding and importance with the American public.  NPR explains on November 5^th that Congress is already wary of Chinese ambitions in space, as it has barred NASA from using federal funds to work with the Chinese.  The justification is that the Chinese military operates China’s space program and cooperation could undermine national security.  This illustrates that the foundations for tension over the future of space travel are there and as the Sino-American rivalry continues to fester on the global stage, space may once again take on a strategic purpose.

Therefore, India’s Mars mission could have several long-term consequences.  If it fails, the Indians have said that they will learn from the experience and try again.  A successful mission would provide a valuable propaganda boost for the nation and give confidence to Indians that are building the country’s space program.  It could also trigger anxieties among the Chinese about the status of their space program and could eventually lead to global tensions over space exploration.  If these things occur, extempers could be talking more about space in future years.