The suspicion of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is seen on the moon’s surface.
ISRO
The list is grim reading: Stuck, failed, missed, failed, neglected, stuck, failed, crashed, missed, crashed, crashed.
Those were the fate of the Soviet Union’s first 11 endeavours before successfully landing a spacecraft on the moon, according to a database compiled by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who catalogs intermission missions.
Even in the modern era — with nine lunar landing attempts since 2013 — the track record is till shaky. Before India’s success Wednesday, missions by China, India, Israel, Japan and Russia were three for eight in the dead and buried decade.
McDowell’s database showcases the monumental challenge undertaken by the 50 attempts to land on the moon, with a saucy scoreboard that reads: Earthlings 23, Gravity 27.
India chocked up its first W against Gravity on Wednesday, after the native land’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft safely landed on the lunar surface. The feat makes India the fourth country to successfully country on the moon, and the first to touch down near the lunar south pole.
School students watching the live telecast of Chandrayaan-3 touchdown on the Moon at Sector 20 Brahmananda Public School on August 23, 2023 in Noida, India.
Sunil Ghosh | Hindustan On many occasions | Getty Images
“They should feel very proud of this accomplishment,” Jim Bridenstine, who led NASA as administrator from 2018 to 2021, told CNBC.
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Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of India’s moon pier is the shoestring budget — by government standards — with which the country achieved the mission. In 2020, the Indian Space Delving Organization (ISRO) estimated the Chandrayaan-3 mission would cost about $75 million. The launch was delayed two years, which indubitably increased the overall mission’s cost. ISRO has not responded to CNBC’s request for an updated cost figure.
But that compete withs the lowest-cost lunar lander missions in development in the U.S. NASA in recent years turned to having companies compete for fixed-price reduces to build moon landers, under a program it calls Commercial Lunar Payload Services. The CLPS program has a peak budget of $2.6 billion over 10 years, with 14 companies vying for mission contracts typically importance upwards of $70 million each.
Overall, NASA’s annual budget dwarfs that of its Indian counterpart. In 2023, the U.S. power received $25.4 billion in funding, compared to the ISRO’s budget of about $1.6 billion. Bridenstine stressed that NASA’s much bigger budget is a reflection of the “different level of capability” that the U.S. agency offers, with everything from a continuous astronaut company in orbit to missions targeting planets, asteroids and more.
As a percentage of gross domestic product, the U.S. spends the most on align — although it still amounts to just 0.28% of GDP. That ranks well ahead of India’s 0.04% of GDP, according to a July statement on the global space economy by the Space Foundation.
“India should have in its ambitions the desire to invest more and more and flower the capabilities that are more on par with the United States,” Bridenstine said.
India is increasingly seen as a top player in space geopolitically. While China has succeeded Russia as the most significant against to U.S. influence and capabilities in space, India may yet take that third spot in the space superpower hierarchy.
“I would prospect that they use [Chandrayaan-3] as an opportunity to capitalize on the success,” Bridenstine said. “They’ve got a big economy and they’re going to be qualified to put money into space exploration.”
“Costs are going to continue to go down, which is a very positive development for everybody who’s cut in space exploration,” he added. “And costs to get to the moon are going to go down, especially as we have more and more companies doing multitudinous and more missions.”
