 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we have with us D. Raghunandan, an expert on aerospace as well as at NewsClick. Raghun, we are discussing the issue of the Mars exploration, the Mars probe. What do you think are the major achievements of this current US Mars probe? Well, I think there are three things that are exciting about this Mars probe. The first is the soft landing of the rover itself, the accuracy with which that was done. It was a very narrow aperture open and an opportunity to land the probe in the exact location where they had wanted it to land. They were looking for places where it is hoped that they would be water. There are known tracks of water available there in the plane. So, they landed there in just the spot they wanted to land and they also wanted to achieve a soft landing of the rover. And the way that was done was also very innovative. It was not just the parachute drop, the parachute itself was done well. It is a very large shoot to be able to land the rover properly, but they also used what they call a space crane, which is essentially a device by which you could lower the module softly towards the Martian surface so that you would have the kind of soft landing that was required. And there was always the danger that the last thing that you would hear from the rover would have been the sound of it crashing onto the surface, but that did not happen. So, that was a very good thing that was done. So, it is called the 10s, 7 minutes of the landing. That is right. So, that was very well done, I thought. And now the expectation will be to see how long the rover remains deployed and the kind of results that the rover sends back because the rover is now going to actually this time test the Martian surface and you will get far greater amount of information on the Martian surface than you got earlier. It is going to look for water and particularly for traces of carbon. And if it does find those kinds of traces, then obviously you are talking about the search for life on Mars. That is right. Coming back to what you said is going to explore the Martian surface. So, what is its energy source going to be? Because it has to be active for almost two years. You have a small nuclear power source inside the rover. So, there is radioactive material there, which is going to be on the Martian surface, going to be operational for about two years. And then it remains to be seen how much other sources of energy it is able to harness. But that is basically the driver for the module. That is what gives it this longevity. Second part of it is that when you said looking for carbon, what you really mean is carbon-based organic molecules. That is right. Now, there is an old debate that is there life on Mars. Do you think there is going to be a definitive answer with respect to the experiments that can be carried out? I think that is very doubtful. The first steps would be the location of water. If you can actually find traces of water, actual liquid water present, that would be a beginning. If the search in the Martian soil yields anything like carbon-based organisms in the Martian soil, that would be a great thing. Carbon-based complex molecules. Complex molecules which could later lead. But I have always wondered why we always assume that life forms outside the Earth are also going to be carbon-based life forms. If you really go with the green man hypothesis, I suppose that works. But you never know what kind of life forms there are going to be on some other planet. But I would be very surprised if you actually got definitive answers to that question on this probe. What do you think the long-term sense that is the objective of this mission? What the rover is called curiosity? That is what the vehicle is being called. I think the significance apart from the curiosity factor of the exploration is that from the NASA point of view, band explorations have now come down except to the space station. The shuttle program has gone. So, they are depending on Russian and other services to go up to the space station. So, it looks like NASA is going to put more efforts into planetary exploration within our solar system which may tomorrow lead to a revival of the manned exploration program in Mars for instance. But that is a long way off. But till then if we start seeing more unmanned exploration, then certainly as far as the manned explorations part of it was concerned, they were always more in the nature of adventure than in throwing up new science. Whereas, the unmanned explorations always give you more science. It may not have been as dramatic as the manned. That is a question that needs to be asked. Does manned exploration and anything that unmanned exploration does not in terms of science? I honestly have not felt so except that it tells you the science of what happens to man in long-term stay in space. So, it tells you that. But if you are wanting to collect information on the other planets, on the atmosphere, on the soil and on the surface, those you would get back from the instruments. You do not need a human hand to go and collect the soil or sample the air. Much cheaper to send the instruments rather than send a man. That is right. And in any case carrying those instruments. The human being there is not going to conduct the experiments. The experiments are ultimately going to be conducted by machines of some form or the other. And as I said, you do not need the human hand to pick it up. A robotic arm will do just as well. The Indian Mars program is also supposed to have been agreed to very recently by the government. It has been given clearance. It is supposed to do it in November 2013. What do you think is the reason for suddenly trying to talk about such an ambitious project within the span of roughly one year, three months? Don't you think it is very ambitious to do it in this short time? Well, the Mars mission that India has launched now, I mean, it has got the approval of the Union Cabinet and the money has been made available. Actually, the first tranche of money was already made available in last year's Union budget where the first tranche of money was released. This mission has been on the cards now for five or six years. From that point of view, and given the rather limited, I would say, ambition of the science that you plan to collect in terms of information from this mission, it is not a particularly ambitious mission. But I think there were some factors which may have prompted the decision to go ahead November. The first reason is that the window of opportunity for a mission to Mars roughly occurs once in about 30 months. So, if you miss the November 13, then your next window is somewhere in 2016 and the next window after that is in 2018 or so. So, either you do it November next year or you wait for the next three years. My feeling is that the Chinese had launched a mission to Mars last year, but their rocket failed to launch properly. So, my feeling may be one reason is that the Indian Space Research Organization thought this would enable them to steal a march over the Chinese in what is called the Asian Space Race and say we went to Mars first. You said it is a limited ambition. Why do you call it a limited ambition Mars mission? The original mission to Mars would have placed a satellite in orbit roughly in a circular orbit around Mars fairly close to the Martian surface at least in well within the Martian atmosphere. And the science goal of the mission was to gather information about the Martian atmosphere. But having decided to launch in November next year, this launch is going to take place aboard the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle of ISRO not in the originally planned geostationary launch vehicle the GSLV. Now, the GSLV would have been a much more powerful rocket would have enabled placing the satellite in this kind of a Martian atmosphere orbit that I was talking about near circular close or that is right in a close orbit. Whereas this one with the PSLV they are going to do what they did in the Chandrayaan lunar mission which is to slingshot the satellite use the gravitational forces and the satellite is going to be placed in a highly elliptical orbit going as far as almost half a million kilometers in one direction but relatively close in the other. So, obviously in the longer part of the ellipse you are not going to get any atmospheric reading. So, you are going to get atmospheric readings only for a limited period of time. So, I am not very optimistic about the value of the science that okay your ISRO would have achieved a Mars mission you will get some information back. But in terms of the technology sending the PSLV to do this job also does not establish any great technological capability which would have happened if you had used the GSLV which unfortunately has failed last time. So, I wish that the ISRO had put more effort into getting the GSLV up and running and functional and use that to launch the Mars probe irrespective of whether we were first or second because I think that would have paid us dividends more in the longer run. If you look at the look at the science of it that the kind of information they are trying to get is already available. In that sense you know collaborative with NASA or the Russians or others to do something really would have made more sense. Talking about the mission in this case would have been the space launch capabilities. So, that part we seem to be not really also if we had used the GSLV to launch the Mars probe we could have put a heavier satellite around Mars which means you can carry more scientific payloads on the satellite. The current payload which they are going to put up is total the scientific payload is just 25 kilos. There is not much science experimentation you can do with a 25 kilo payload whereas if you had used the GSLV you could have put a heavier satellite with more science then many other countries would have happily put experiments also on board this because you have got one NASA probe but if there are more probes going to Mars different countries would have come and said we will also put some new instrument or some observations some science experiment on board that is not going to be possible with the PSLV either which is why I am saying I do not think the gains from the PSLV launch either in terms of the launch vehicle or in terms of the science that you are going to get are particularly great. Some of the critics of the Mars mission in the Indian one have complained that the amount of money being spent 425 crores, 450 crores is too high for India. Do you think there is some validity to that argument? I do not really think so I honestly think this debate about poverty versus the space program is a misplaced debate. The problem of tackling poverty in this country I think we all know that if we are failing in tackling poverty it is not for lack of money. In fact some would say we are throwing a lot of money on the poverty problem without getting the kind of results that you want because we are not doing what is really necessary to tackle poverty and the answers lie more in political economy than in the amount of money and if you think of money the Indian anti-poverty budget annually runs into hundreds of thousands of crores. So your 450 crores spent once on this Mars probe is not even a second decimal place and also the size of the Indian scams are considerably larger than this 450 crores. Many people have been pointing to if there is a resource constraint which is always thrown when you want to do some meaningful social work. Your health budget is low, your education budget is low and the government says we don't have resources and critics have always pointed to the fact that you can mop up black money, you can mop up non-performing assets of large corporate houses, you can mop up unpaid taxes by large corporates each of which runs into again hundreds of thousands of crores. So I don't think the problem is that you are spending a few hundred crores on a Mars mission or on space programs. The real issue I think if you look at the space program if I were to critique the space program my critique would be one we've talked about the problems in this mission itself and that's a valid critique I think to look at but also I would like to look at why is it that in Indian science and technology we seem to be having successes only in these small islands of excellence in space or in nuclear fields and why are we not able to as a nation achieve more in a wider field of science and technology in so many other fields where we seem to be floundering in this one example that comes to mind readily is India has recently imported basic trainers aircraft for our Air Force which are single engine propeller driven aircraft of the kind which India used to manufacture 40 years ago and we today have to import these aircraft and that seems to me astounding and there's something wrong in our science and technology that we are pursuing in our country if we are not able to make a single engine aircraft but we are able to send a probe to Mars I think that speaks volumes to the kind of institutions that we have built for science and technology the kind of political will that we have in the governance of these institutions in obtaining delivery of results from these institutions and this will later and already is reflecting on the kind of education that we are providing our young scientists and engineers in our country which seems to be misdirected and not producing the kinds of results that we want so interesting we can think about PSLV and GSLV launch vehicles but we really are not able today to manufacture single engine propeller aircraft and it's not for a lack of ability it's not for the lack of the infrastructure it's lack of the ability to be able to do it and to be able to achieve it ultimately the lack of political that's thank you very much Raghu we'll discuss further what happens to Indian Mars probe when it when even when it takes place thank you