Page 612 - SSB Interview: The Complete Guide, Second Edition

expenditure of around $74 million while the MAVEN mission by NASA
for Mars had a total expenditure of $672 million. With this, India set the

record for the least-expensive Mars mission to date. It costs only 11% of

NASA’s Mars Orbiter’s cost.

Future Cooperation in Space Research

Chandrayaan-1 played an important role in the ISRO-NASA joint

discovery of water molecules on the moon surface, which was
unattained by any previous missions for the moon. This will boost the

joint ventures of the two space agencies.

The NASA-ISRO Mars Working Group was established to investigate

enhanced cooperation between these agencies in Mars exploration in
future.

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar or NISAR satellite is a joint

venture to provide a detailed view of Earth by using advanced radar
imaging. It is expected to be launched from India by 2020 or 2021. It is

considered to be the world’s most expensive Earth Monitoring Satellite.

Recently, ISRO has joined with NASA for space research programmes

to discover new galaxies, exoplanets, stars, etc.

Future of Space Technology

NASA’s motto is “To reach for new heights and reveal the unknown so that
what we do and learn will benefit all humankind”, whereas ISRO’s motto is

“Our vision is to harness space technology for national development, while
pursuing space science research and planetary exploration.” From these, it is
clear that the vision and mission of both agencies are entirely different. But

when they cooperate with each other in upcoming projects in future, it may
be possible to discover many hidden mysteries in our universe.