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EXPLORATION Soumya Maitra
Mars Colour Camera on-board Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) captured this spectacular image of flood carved channel system of Kasei Valles on 12 January 2018. (Courtesy: ISRO)
Consequence of the Race to Space
Amidst the COVID-19 disruption and chaos, 30 May 2020 marked a milestone in humankind’s dream of travelling to space when Space X became the first private endeavour to fly astronauts to the International Space Station. Historically, space programs have always been initiative of government agencies like ISRO, ESA, or NASA. While several nations have government space agencies, only six have full launch capabilities and India’s ISRO is one of them. The other five agencies are the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Russian Federal Space Agency (RFSA, also known as Roscosmos), the China National Space Administration (CNSA), the Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the European Space Agency (ESA) which is a collaborative organisation of several European nations.
Space travel is no longer limited to orbits around Earth, landing on Moon, or even a Martian landing. A manned mission to the red planet is no longer a matter of if, but when. India has already got a Mars Orbiter in place since September 2014. With the privatisation of space launch capabilities and entry of players like Space X and Boeing, we are entering the teenage years of space travel. But like any other privatisation exercise, space travel is now going to be more competitive and therefore economical, and drive innovation faster. We don’t
have to look hard in the annals of history for a suitable analogy. The world of computer science and applications was conceived in the universities, research institutes, and defence labs. Internet, for instance, had its infancy in the 1960s when the United States Department of Defense built the ARPANET (Advanced Research Project Agency Network), which served as the ßinternet” of that era (the 1960s and 1970s) for universities and the military.
Computing and technology inno- vation disrupt the global market and human behaviour every so often. All this would not have been possible so fast and on such a scale without opening up technology to the public and
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