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Also See: Chandrayaan 3 Moon Landing
Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is looking to open its space sector to foreign investment as it targets a five-fold increase in its share of the global launch market within the next decade.
India’s current space market is worth around $8 billion and has been growing at about 4% annually in the last few years, compared to 2% globally.
India’s space economy is likely to touch $40 billion by 2040 and a successful Chandrayaan-3 mission may help India achieve the target much sooner as more countries are expected to approach India for launching their satellites, said analysts.
If Chandrayaan-3 succeeds, analysts expect India’s space sector to capitalise on a reputation for cost-competitive engineering. The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) had a budget of around just $74 million for the mission.
NASA, by comparison, is on track to spend roughly $93 billion on its Artemis moon programme through 2025, the U.S. space agency’s inspector general has estimated.
“The moment this mission is successful, it raises the profile of everyone associated with it,” said Ajey Lele, a consultant at New Delhi’s Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.
10:34
Chandrayaan-3 soft landing: ISRO scientist says it’s a ‘very difficult job’
Nasa’s playbook
India is looking to follow Nasa’s playbook in opening the space sector to private money.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is developing the Starship rocket for its satellite launch business as well as to ferry Nasa astronauts to the Moon’s surface under a $3-billion contract. Beyond that contract, SpaceX will spend roughly $2 billion on Starship this year, Musk has said.
US space firms Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines are building lunar landers that are expected to launch to the Moon’s south pole by year’s end, or in 2024.
Companies such as Axiom Space and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are developing privately funded successors to the International Space Station.
03:07
Chandrayaan-3: Here’s what Vikram lander and rover will do after Moon touchdown
New space race
A successful soft landing on the moon will make India only the fourth country in the world to achieve the feat after the United States, Russia and China.
India will also become the first country to land on the lunar south pole.
Russia had been racing against India, and more broadly against China and the United States which both have advanced lunar ambitions, to land on the Moon’s south pole, which is of special interest to scientists because of the occurrence of water ice that could play a vital role in future human exploration missions.
There are at least 10 other lunar missions planned between now and 2025, with the US, Israel, China and Japan — including a joint mission with India — all going to Moon.
These missions are part of a renewed interest globally to return to Moon and efforts for a more sustained presence.
(With inputs from agencies)
03:38
Chandrayaan-3 Mission: Vikram lander separates successfully, now landing on Moon on August 23
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