The History and Future of India's Space Program

When thinking about the global leaders in space exploration, one might traditionally think back to the space race of the cold war era, about the United States and the then USSR. However after the Soviet Union’s collapse due to economic problems, it lost its competitive edge in the race to explore outer space. The United States had a number of a number of setbacks, including the lost of the Columbia space shuttle and several unmanned probes. The United States is still in recovery mode from these losses and is only now getting back on track to return to its mission of space exploration. With the two previous leaders in space exploration lagging behind innovation and research, this has opened a window of opportunity for other developed nations to accomplish what the United States might not be able to.

With recent economic growth and technological innovation in India, it’s no surprise that the country is quickly becoming one of the leaders in extraterrestrial research. India’s Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is the principal agency working to advance space exploration in the country of India. The organization currently has an annual budget of 22.6 billion US dollars and employs 17,000 employees. Comparatively, NASA has a budget of 16 billion US Dollars and employs 18,000 employees.

Since India set it’s sights on space research and exploration in the 1970’s it’s had a number of successful missions including two satellite programs. The first satellite program, called INSAT, was to take care of the telecommunications needs of India. The second satellite program, called Indian Remote Sensing Satellites, is for natural resource management and economic planning. India plans on launching a remote sensing satellite to the moon called Chandrayan 1 in 2007.