Explained | How success of India’s Chandrayaan-3 is fuelling Delhi-Beijing space race

While going to sleep on the lunar surface, the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover have revitalised Chinese ambitions to further the gap between itself and a fast growing Indian space programme. 

Ziyuan claimed that “the landing site of Chandrayaan-3 is not at the lunar south pole, not in the lunar south pole region, nor is it near the lunar south pole region.” 

But Chandrayaan-3 went much further south than any other lunar mission in the past, it has been established.  

How India-China space race is heating up?

Let’s start with basic data and where the demand is stemming from. 

According to an Ernst & Young projection, in the next two years, the space economy will grow to $600 billion from $447 billion in 2020.

Meanwhile, the demand for high-speed internet (sourced from satellites) has resulted in launch of private satellites as a prosperous revenue-making exercise for space enterprises and agencies.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is a serious player in the private satellite launch space, alongside the state-owned space agencies of Russia and China. 

But due to war in Ukraine and Beijing’s trade tensions with Washington, both Moscow and Beijing are now off limits to many would-be customers.

India is turning out to be the safest choice for private satellite launches amid ongoing geopolitical tumult that has antagonised Beijing and Moscow in the West.

“If SpaceX is full, busy or expensive, you have to look elsewhere – and you can’t look at China,” Dallas Kasaboski, principal analyst with Northern Sky Research, a space research and consulting firm was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. 

“China can’t work with North America and the US drives the majority of demand,” Kasaboski said.

Besides, India’s space sector is currently riding on the success of its showpiece event of the twenty-first century so far; a soft-landing near Moon’s south pole. The country has established its footprint where nobody else has gone before, following which, the profile of Indian Space Research Organisation expanded its influence beyond the length and breadth of the world’s fifth biggest economy.

“Politically, India is in a much better place,” he said.

Meanwhile, India is also gearing up for its ambitious maiden human spaceflight mission, Gaganyaan, scheduled for 2024. A recent video shared by Indian Air Force led to speculations if the personnel shown were the country’s coveted astronauts, throwing open another wave of optimism on social media across India. 

ISRO’s space expedition to study the Sun with Aditya L-1 is already on track to reach its destination at Lagrange Point 1 in the first week of January.

What else is working for India?

For many satellite operators in the West, often, the Chinese rockets are not deemed good options amid concerns related to Beijing gaining access to Western technology.

At the same time, if the reports in public domain are to go by, Indian private space companies are doing exceedingly well, whereas China’s iSpace, which was incorporated in 2016 often and touted as Asia’s first private space company, is struggling due to a number of factors that have impacted post-Covid China led by Xi Jinping.

Also watch | China’s Tiangong space station faces equipment delay from India

At the same time, the country’s launches also cost less than SpaceX, Moscow and Beijing.

Besides, developing India’s space sector remains on top of the agenda of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” campaign, which aims to position India as a top destination for technological innovation. 

In 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government eased rules for private sector satellite and rocket companies and allowed them to carry out independent space activities instead of being solely the suppliers to ISRO. 

The reforms meant that startups can also access ISRO’s facilities, such as launchpads and laboratories. By 2025, the value of India’s satellite launch services, according to a Bloomberg report, could almost double to $1 billion.

India also remains a popular choice for cost-efficient launches.

“There aren’t many players that have a large-capacity launch vehicle that’s cheap,” Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics, which is operated by Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution, was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. “And that’s not China or Russia.”

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