Dr snat welcome to the r show Dr the on the is is thinking of a space tourism project we have a vision till 2047 now to send human beings to Moon do you think a planet is visited by extraterrestrial absolutely no doubt about it there are aliens out in the universe you're the chairperson of is Ros yeah yeah I'm telling you they will treat you like a earthworm I have to bring up a slightly current affairs topic next which is uh Sunita Williams ma'am astronaut Sunita Williams will be spending more time in space is there anything that we can do at ISRO in India uh the only possibilities especially when it comes to chandan 3 everyone's so full of celebratory emotions like what have we learned about the moon through the chandan 3 many things there's a little tiny part of me that feels like ISRO has some very very important projects that are kept secret away from the public eye for good reason believe that and continue what kind of conversations happen about Elon Musk within his Ro look at him how what he's doing in his rockets and his Reus abilities the new spacecrafts you designing but if you were in a room with him what would the conversation be like between you two so what is his vision to move human beings to exosolar planets I'll ask him straight exosolar planets yes the planets belonging to another star would would you be open to it teaming up with Elon Musk why not definitely does NASA share that data with other space agencies nobody shares data with anyone but there is things that America probably knows about Mars that India doesn't right now of course they will and there's things India knows about the Moon that America doesn't in my opinion there could be something yes wow okay in your whole career like what's the strangest thing that you've learned about outer space we all know that universe is expanding what we are talking to each other there is a light coming out of our face if it has a way to escape through through this a small window in this room and go into space our image will be going into the space even after we are dead and gone the light that came out of us will be still traveling in the universe and anybody looks at that light will be able to see us living talking to each [Music] other this is one of the most iconic moments in my own career because we have one of the icons of modern day India Dr s somat the chairperson of ISRO who also overlooked the chandran 3 mission that we all celebrated last year in order to Mark the success of the chandran 3 23rd August every single year will be celebrated as National Space day so on the first annual National Space Day celebration we are going to be celebrating ISRO and speaking in detail about the multiple missions like the gagan mission the aday Yan Mission the shukra Mission and many other aspects of modern day space Tech if you're someone who enjoys conversations about outer space about a solar system about aliens about black holes and about everything that our country is up to in the world of space Tech this is going to be one of the most memorable conversations and one of the most iconic podcasts you'll ever listen to that's a promise because it's Dr s somat on TRS [Music] Dr s welcome to the RV show thank you so much how are you sir I'm fine how's it like being on your first podcast I think yeah I think it is okay yeah uh can I just begin by telling you how much the whole country respects you guys uh I usually Reserve this part of my podcast for the end of the conversation but I have to begin today's podcast by saluting you thank you so much it's a great honor to listen from you no sir genuinely uh there's too much respect we all feel for you like it's the honor of Our Lives as a team also to be at ISRO speaking to the chairman so thank you sir thank you so much once again how's life generally at this phase no at this phase now after having worked for so many years in his space it's all space space technology activities here engaging with a lot of the stakeholders all that day in and day out okay is there any element of stress in your life of course stress is integral part of it and the whole question is how you manage it because see when we get good news from ISRO yeah on the news the whole country explodes with celebration uh for example now August 23rd it's going to be National Space day yes that's the Imp Act of ISRO for our country I can't imagine what it's like for all of you here in terms of uh when before chandan 3 happened as an event what was the mood like here before the final result came through now every everybody was uh expecting that this time we are going to make it but there is always skepticism in in such things no whether have you done enough uh suppose it happens not able to make it this time what will be the consequence of it now many people are worried uh but then uh the whole job of giving confidence to people uh but the confidence shall not be based on know any false narrative it has to be on factual things that you are done what possible things that can be done and we are done enough so this measure of quantification you know Justice to the whole work that I had to do have you ever watched a movie called Chuck the India oh yes with Shah ruk Khan yes you know in the end when the team wins the championship and there's that scene of them celebrating them celebrating yes uh when chandan 3 happened that was the meme that went viral that that was the rest of India yeah yeah of course and you would have seen it all of them rejoicing on that day you know when it landed Softly on the moon yeah it was a huge day for our country um but was it similar for you were you also going through something like what Shah ruk Khan went through internally of course internally I was not uh not with know with without any words at that time it was difficult but I was posing know you are to swallow that moment know enjoy that moment and that's what I was precisely doing not really showing it outwardly yes not showing it outwardly yeah you would have watched me in the TV that I was not showing it at all but I mean internally behind the scenes away from cameras were you showing it no no no I I never show overjoy or sadness at all in any time what did you do that night when you were sleeping I was happily sleeping there was no celebration no celebration so see we many of times people watch this R always wondered what so some some foreigners who came to launch satellites they they asked me what do you do for recreation more work so you can understand that really yeah wow because I think everyone who works here is genuinely passionate about space precisely it's not work that we are doing we are enjoying what the time that we spend here that's the key to Mega success of course and mega success is also noticed by other Mega successful people like Elon Musk he also an inspiration for us really yes really let's talk about this sir yeah of course um what kind of conversations happened about Elon Musk within his Ro and most of the time when I meetings or any other place we discuss designs Concepts we CAU Elon Musk my younger people c i CAU why don't you look at him how what he's doing in his rockets in his reusability and new spacecrafts you designing the concept of constellations technology that is bringing in we are amazed by the speed that she is able to bring and also the way which is able to go through the processes within the country you know that's again another important thing it's not just doing technology it's also able to bring the technology to a ultimate result that's very tough thing for many people don't understand the the technology and the politics of applying technology the politics of applying technology yes wow are you elaborating a little of course I am see he had a vision to get a reusable launch vehicle he was able to manage to get an engine which was developed by NASA almost 10 10 years of money 10 years of work he was able to get in a private ecosystem that was difficult in America one point in time he managed it within the system possibly through an political influence and after having realized the reusable rocket possibly he has looked at it as a numbers know hundreds of launchers are available and for which satellite he can use it then he created the Starling constellation Okay thousands of satellite he was able to launch and most of the launches are for him alone and today we know how he is utilizing the satellites and the satellites are not used just for communication purpose it is used for the national utilization Global Communication where the entire us is now depend on it so he made an approach a concept and made it into the into the you know into the into the nation so this can be done only by a person who understand the system how the country Works how the decisions are taken who are the influential people who drives all the system so he he works with the political system he works with the government he works with the technologist he works with the engineers cor so that's really amazing what I love about him is he has his inner child alive along with everything that you're saying uh about all the technicalities the people skills required to um you know move the political needle a little bit forward and then he's also having fun in the process yeah it's a curiosity that's that you mentioned about the childlike nature yeah do you keep a track of his tweets where he's cheerleading ISRO he has done many times yeah whenever he did I I have been observing yes okay have you interacted with him not really I have watched him live performing in some of the astronautical Congress functions yes okay but if you were in a room with him what would the conversation be like between you two I will talk about its Future Vision for example he talked about the reusable Rockets he's now talking about going to Mars and creating habitats for colonization see one of the bigger challenge for space people is to attain high speeds to reach distant planets for example exosolar planets so what is his vision to move human beings to exosolar planets I'll ask him straight exosolar planets yes you mean outside the solar system exosolar planets are the planets belonging to another star so we know the star We Belong is the Sun so for every Star there is a planetary system but if there is a planetary system and there is a planet like Earth there possibly we can go and leave there so the next star is Alpha Century there are planets around it or even a star which is 40 50 light years away also there are planets so if they find a Planet there if you have reach there how will you ever reach uh what is the alpha Century solar system like I do not know exactly the number of planets around it uh it's difficult to find out so we use it t Scopes uh special observation platforms to find out today you know uh almost 5,000 exos planets have been discovered out of that almost 100 of them are possible to have life on them yeah okay they are possible that they have life on them life or or possible that human beings can go and settle there one day possible that only if you are able to travel a tremendously high speeds to reach there in your lifetime possible it's not possible you know in lifetime of 100 years you can reach there okay I have so many tangential questions because there is a segment we've planned about terraforming okay which is basically you know you go to a planet like Mars and the way Elon mus says it is that you just heat it up a little bit and add some bacteria on the planet uh that's the very very simplified logic of terraforming but when you're talking about all these other planets uh are you saying it from the perspective of terraforming them no really it need not be some of them may be already ready for us to occupy for example if the temperature is like Earth like temperature 20 to 30 and ice is water is still in the form of water it has an atmosphere uh similar to Earth may not be similar where the oxygen percentage could be lower higher still it can be changed over a period of time to become habitable but there could be some form of life living there but if human beings go they can live there without much difficulty for example if you have an atmosphere itself is a great Boon you know many of the planets don't have atmosphere you look at Mars it has a very in atmosphere because of that there is a radiation issue there is a low pressure related issue suppose atmospheric pressure is almost two bar assume it is better than having a very low atmospheric pressure so I am I'm sure that many of those planets will have a uh will be just right for us to go and live there wow yeah this is also a little bit the child in you speaking of right like that's why you enjoy I I really find fascinating story around it many of times I when I interact with kids I talk about these stories the one thing I got to ask you is um about this Mars colonization angle I saw the conversation you did with Technical guruji and you gave the example of Antarctica you said that no country technically governs Antarctica but every country wants to try and set up a base there so it's good that India set up a base there yes now 50 years from now you'll have to probably go and set up a base at Mars as well and you said that it's important for India to think about that because otherwise we'll be left behind in terms of absolutely reputation at least yes right yes no doubt about it is this a conversation that the scientist at ISRO have regularly about how we can actually put people on Mars over the next 10 20 years see we we yes to start that conversation in India in this Ro context because we are talking about developing certain capability to send human beings to space through our gagan program go to moon and land no we those capabilities are yet to be acquired by yes but I believe that those Visions will be created in due course at least we have a vision till 2047 now to send human beings to Moon I'm sure next generation will take on on this and then build the capability to go to Mars but all the ingredients for such a dream to happen is already there got it uh again the one thing I know about space Tech is that it builds up incrementally yes of course like one thing leads to another yeah for example if you talk about gagan right now the goal is to take Indian astronauts and put them in space yes after that mission is successful which it will be knowing isro's reputation uh The Next Step would be to put them on the moon of course yes no not really on the moon we the the first part of the gagan mission is to send human beings to space keep them in orbit in as very congested place the crew crew module bring them back but then we are planning to build a space station the par Anda station which will be a room like this enormous space and you can work there live there months together conduct experiments come back and forth so that will be the second phase of work so multiple people will go and work there for scientific technical or commercial Pursuits after that we use that as a base to go to Moon then possibly when the moon bases could be set up by that time moon bases yeah wow like what you live in a space station why don't you go and live on the moon it's possible and then people will ask you you don't have enough space on Earth that that you are going living on the moon the reason is simple moon is a place where you can actually create the second base for us to further exploration it is difficult to travel from Earth because that atmosphere and if you have a base at Moon you can incrementally create the base and from there you will synthesize fuels then create the build the craft and much lesser cost you'll be able to travel Beyond what's your vision of that base the base could be an underground base because in the absence of an at atmosphere the safety against radiation micromet your impacts Etc can be well you know handled if you have an underground base so you need to dig and create a base underneath uh temperature will be benign you will have a you can create a breathing space working environment and then work from there all your antennas will be outside and you will be inside you know sir uh especially when it comes to chandan 3 everyone's so full of celebratory emotions that very few people ask uh about what the Rover is up to on the moon right now that is the job of the folks at ISRO yes so what's the kind of data being sent back like what have we learned about the moon through the chandrian 3 many things okay that depends on the payloads that we have you know we put something called instruments on board there were five instruments important instruments on chandrian 3 we had three on the Vikram and two on the Roa pran so the pran had two separate instruments one which will will apply radiation alpha particles limit it will go and hit the materials on the surface from the material scatter there will be a spectrometer which will measure what elements it is made of so you can understand the on the surface whether it is made of carbon hydrogen oxygen nitrogen phosphorus silicon you can distinguish from them there was another instrument which is again uh a laser based instrument so it will send a laser beam and once it hits the surface it will abl fumes will come out of it and this fumes will be imaged by a spectrometer this again finds out the similar manner the elemental composition so what we did is the Rover was moving around and then at different places it will stop it'll do this function measure it again go to a next next location so almost 100 m it moved and did all the measurements and collected all the data and we had some interesting observation we published it had also the cameras no two stereo cameras were there so those images we collected and we had three instruments on board Vikram uh one was to measure the sismic behavior that called lunar know shake vibrations that you can measure Moon Quakes Quakes yes Moon Quakes you can measure and there was another one which was measuring the thermophysical character of the regolith the regoli is a material that constitute the surface so we put a probe into it then send some current to heat it up so once you heat it up it will measure the temperature gradient and from that you can measure how the conductivity the electrical properties things like that wow then we had a probe that was almost 1 M long it it was swinging open then it will measure the electrons around you know there is no atmosphere so because of that it is charged so this charging will happen day and night with the sunlight so this charge electrons will rise up in the daytime go down in the night so this was being measured using this uh so I mentioned about all the five instruments now yeah I mean the surface level conversation here yeah is the moon economy people believe especially within go political conversations that over the next 20 to 30 years after we are able to actually set up bases perhaps on the moon or send people more regularly to the Moon you'll be able to mine for minerals you'll be able to extract things from the Moon surface and then you'll be able to sell them for money on Earth is that a conversation that ISRO has not yet because this uh these are discussions that are happening in in many level scientist level but then the feasibility of that will happen only when you are able to move equipments to do it for example you know you have seen a mining in Mining facility massive equipment tons and tons of excavators diers know filters processors melting tools heating equipments how to take all of them to Moon okay and it's very easy to tell that you will dig all the material and extract platinum gold helium Etc out of it but then it huge amount of transporting all this equipments up there from Earth to Moon of us and every transportation is hugely costly because the rocket can take only few tons maybe hundreds of tons not thousands of tons so that means our rocket capability has to increase so and that will happen only when the rocket become cheaper that's why the reusability and many other things are important how to become the fuel should be the only the costly item the rocket should be able to re reuse many times so that's the prospect that the Elan musk and others are giving that you have have a reusable rocket you have a fuel which is methane which is very very cheap and oxygen which is anyway plenti available so once you have a very low cost rocket you can transport all of this up there then bring back also difficult to Earth for example you know how an material comes back to Earth if it enters Earth it will all burn off nothing will enter Earth so to bring back Earth you need high temperature protection very complex vehicle like the space shle or the capsules and every Landing is a complex process so even if you have gold to bring back it's very very costly you know what I'm visualizing but I'm visualizing Dr snat and Elon Musk back to back like this teaming up for the sake of the Moon we should do we should do yes would you be open to it why not teaming up with Elon Musk why not definitely but we should be on equal equal footing to when you talk about teaming yeah yes I think a person like him would be open to it uh he's literally mentioned ISRO so much on International podcasts I think he's mentioned ISRO more than he's NASA like in my eyes so thank thanks to Elan musk I'm really looking forward to the day where uh you meet him and something comes out of this process for the sake of humanity again definitely yes we'll be happy to do that right uh because effectively every piece of work at esro while it makes India proud it's effectively for all of humankind yes um is that a responsibility you feel all of us feel about it because the the whole Space is such a unifying part you know once you get out of the surface of Earth go to space look at Earth and know look at as a fragile Planet the boundaries vanishes the entire Humanity looks at it as one of our cradle of life and we it is becoming our responsibility you know it becomes over burdening on us to see how we take responsibility to protect it whoever went to space they were mesmerized by this view I had never been to space so I can't talk about it but those if I borrow the words of those people those astronauts and cosmonauts who went up there all of them were misprised by this look of Earth and they speak about the similar know narratives big blue ball B yes but I think uh they starting space tourism in a big way right now over the next 5 years it is happening it is happening in certain manner but I I am not seeing it you know increasing it to an extent because of various reasons one is it is still costly okay it has to the cost has come down substantially I'm sure it will with the new technologies it will come down uh and we are also trying to see how our knowledge in this area can help in some Indian companies to come up with the tourism possibilities but this tourism is only going up to 100 kilometers and then experience it for a little B but I believe the real tourism is in going to space and stay for some time wow or maybe traveling to planets all this will happen provided then it becomes routin see we everything become cheaper once you have larg number of people using it the scale of operations become larger today the space activities are not of that scale which will make it affordable to much of the people Society yes is is thinking of a space tourism project is is an enabler know I will enable private companies industries that are willing to take up such projects happy to go cooperate why not build it out yourselves see that is a commercial uh goal of it and uh right now we are focusing on technology development and creating those technology within house for us the industries to take on this is our mandate so even for the Rockets as you would seen that we develop the rocket all what have been productionize we move to Industry for them to uh commercially exploit and we go back and work on a better system so this will be the process even for tourism that will be the model okay yeah but it will be a profit generating um service it has to be because unfortunately we are not business people unlike alen musk he knows both side of the job technology as well as business so we we concentrate on the uh technology side of it the business side I would like to be handled by Industries who are much better qualified to do it have you visualized yourself in a spacecraft looking down at the big blue ball 10 15 years from now I always dreamed of being lying on moon looking at Earth with a oneway ticket with the one way yeah why never to come back to earth and explore the moon forever good the dark side and sleep forever there and say hi to the possible extraterrestrial life maybe does that Fascinate You it fascinates of course you know aliens aliens always fascinates yes what aspect of it see uh this is a very interesting question alien we call our intelligent creatures living things sometimes more intelligent than us or not that much intelligent than us see we call ourselves an evoled creature no you know everything you know how to communicate technology all with us but just imagine just 100 years back you are nothing you are not having these microphones these cameras these lights the communication systems the television nothing was there just 100 years back our history is not 100 years our history is millions of years the whole human C evolved over millions of years but in the last 100 years you achieved all of this to talk about going space and talking about aliens Etc just imagine there is another civilization out there which is just 200 years behind you they are very good but they don't have this Technologies just otherwise you imagine there is another civilization which is thousand years ahead of you thousand years is nothing in the cosmic scale you know you understand that so they will be so evolved in 100 years you can make this much of progress just imagine in next 100 years where will you be or in assume in next Thousand Years where will you be in terms of the progress of technology so and a society or Evolution or a alien system which is Thousand Years Progressive than you will be always here they must be listening to your podcast right away and they know what we are and they will treat you like a earthworm for us we are nowhere so I always believe that there is alien around us be much evolved because we are not the one that has come the recent times we were we were the very recent origins of you know life form possibly there are origins of life and much evolved life everywhere in the universe no doubt about it I'm loving speaking to yourself feel like I'm talking to a big brother who thinks in the similar way about aliens about extraterrestrial Life and Science yes the thing is often when one speaks about these kind of topics uh you're rejected by large sections of society because as one grows up in the world you're told to kill off your inner child but I feel that that's very important for the sake of imagination creativity and therefore your work because um there's a difference between being scientistic and scientific scientific helps you discover the unknown scientistic makes you reject the unknown maybe that's a good definition uh but let's let's actually speak about this alien situation sir how come you have are only spotted in America and South America that's where you hear most of it see many of times these type observations are much more feasible in the northern latitudes Southern latitudes see you know equatorial region are always cloudy if you look at Africa India or the South Asian all those nations are in the Equator the European northern European and American are in the northern northern latitudes and on the southern latitude you don't have any Nation other than Australia M gotta so you if any events of this nature especially the events in the sky where there is a for example auroras you are able to see in the northern side the solar uh related effects are mostly seen in the norn side even the Cyclones and other activities are more on the other sides not not on the equator equator has a different climatic conditions and mostly it is covered the sky is mostly dark not blue if you go to us you will see the sky to be more Bluer Than India it's not due to pollution alone it's due to various the the content of water vapor in there and many things so this is scientific right now there is non-scientific reason Americans have a nature to detect so many things all around and make a story out of it and and many of the UFO stories are more mostly fabricated stories not the real stories many of them are yeah some of them might be true maybe true because I can't comment on it because I not seen it yet but do you think our planet is visited by extraterrestrial absolutely no doubt about it it in my my my conscience says I don't have a proof you're the chairperson of isos yeah yeah I'm telling you I I it comes from out of my earlier statement that there are aliens out in the universe aliens means living systems are there cultures are there in other part of this universe then they would have definitely visited us if they are ahead in technology than us say Thousand Years 10,000 years ahead 10,000 years again is also minuscule time scale in the evolution of the universe just imagine a a a society which is 10,000 years ahead in technology compared to us where will they be they will be frequently coming and going out of Earth without ever we knowing it it's the equivalent of us keeping lions in a zoo yeah right we are the Lions in the zoo for them precisely like our planet is the zoo precisely yes do you think that they would be benevolent or malevolent in either way I will be happy never to be in touch with them I will tell you why yes there is a reason see the the biology is such that we we are evolved out of a common biology that connects every living creature on the surface of Earth whether it is plant whether it is bacteria whether it is fish or animal and we are one and the same you look at the genomics you will understand this one and the same there is no nature which is a protein which is different in nature in on on the surface of Earth everything evolved out of single possible life form so we are all connected in some manner but suppose something has devolved in another planet would have been synthesized and entirely different manner it may not have the similar genome structure it may not have the similar protein structure and it is entirely dangerous to for two life forms to come in contact with each other the moment it come contact with each other something has to overtake the other this is the nature of the life okay one will not allow the other one to survive it has to be overtaken and destroyed so unless they have a conscience about this okay they realize these two are different and we need to remain disconnected in terms of the body or the chem chemistry of it and keep that apart and work together to find a solution for us to meet each other not at the level of the mind and the thought but in the level of the body if that doesn't happen it will cause destruction either to them or to us basically they might be carrying some kind of diseases I'm not talking in terms of disease it it's in terms of the way in which we live the the the form of the body our blood our way we o for example oxygen we breathe oxygen what is the guarantee oxygen is the gas that they need for us for them to leave we don't know in fact I have seen a science fiction novel in which they breathe methane in one planet there is another and they float on the air with a huge balloon on them there was a NASA documentary on it so such forms are possible and they they come in contact with us it will be extremely dangerous for us or we in contact with them will be dangerous for them okay do you believe in any of these theories like uh the lizard people or the anunaki would say that probably they've taken human form and they are with us right now on this planet because if if they are 10,000 years ahead of us yeah they would have accounted for even this uh biological problem possible possible they would have find found out a solution I don't have a solution today to make these two work together but they would have already founded a solution we're just two lions talking to each other right know those are the human beings outside the cage true true true yeah we can talk like that do the scientist at ISRO talk about extraterrestrial life to each other there are many people in ISRO who are fascinated by all of this so whenever we in free time evenings when we converse in free times possibly we talk about all of this yes okay yeah especially with my younger colleagues I spent a lot of time okay um while I wish to ask you so much more about science and engineering uh there is an inner child version of me that also wants to ask you about the spiritual aspect of being a scientist um now this is also slightly in the domain of Neuroscience long story short they say that there's a logical part of your brain and an emotional part of your brain so when you are asleep you go from your logical part of the brain being more active to your emotional part of the brain being more active that's why before an exam if you study when you wake up the next morning you remembered better because your brain is able to assimilate that information much better yes but parall speaking if you study the History of Science on our planet in the last 300 400 years there's countless scientists who say that they got answers to a problem in a dream uh they understood what to do next in a Dream It's perhaps just the emotional side of the brain processing all that data and the spiritual way of looking at it is it's a higher Dimension that's placed those ideas or those Concepts within the mind how do you look at this because a very interesting part of discussion that you're opening up no there are many elements to it there see I I must tell you human mind is such a powerful uh machine may not be the right way to use it powerful system in which uh what you feed into it it can synthesize in many ways based on your discipline so when you talk about the disciplining your mind is some sort of a training a random mind cannot synthesize data that's why the we in in our system in Indian way we always taught them to concentrate so once you start concentrating on a given problem so deep into it it shows up the answers it has been the case for most of those scientists who worked on this topic your ability to concentrate is is has a phenomenal effect Swami VI talked about it long back how when he reads books so fast that he was able to assimilate everything by by scanning it not by reading it so this shows the ability of every human being to concentrate differ based on his training so if you train yourself you can assimilate it very fast you you can find out solutions to problem because you able to connect between the knowledge that you have knowledge is nothing but that you have what you assimilated over periods of time and your experience connect with that you are able to find out a new solution the spiritual part comes as a different item at all even I am talking about your day-to-day non-sp spiritually talking itself till now it was Neuroscience neuro part itself it's it is explainable that uh even Newton said once that if you have no answers to a problem you define the problem you convert that problem into an object and bring it in in front of you you you define a mathematical problem you define it as an object place it in front of you look at it and concentrate on it then leave it and do remaining work of your life all on a sudden you will find the answer so every time that you are to remember that that problem is in front of you you are not not forgetting it it is there in your mind very actively kept and if you can do that just imagine can you even concentrate on one topic for 10 seconds your mind know deviates even that is not possible for human beings even two seconds is a great great thing if you can do so ability to concentrate is is a phenomenal capability have you had any experiences like this at ISRO while you're trying to solve a problem and you feel you've been helped from a higher place to achieve your result answer is yes of course if I should not be you know I should be sincere to myself many of times when I sit to review a problem or an issue with all my colleagues Not Alone In fact I get charged up to think and I and many of times I feel myself that though I may not be knowing everything about it I have an answer and many of times the direction that we choose the approaches that we take are benefactor by those type of support no doubt about it you're able to see the vision in your head in order to achieve the result no doubt yes it is there and provided you are able to concentrate you are able to understand there are higher Powers working then definitely those type of support will be there do you see dreams where you're helped no never it's just in the moment at the workplace only at the workplace when you are on it dreams never helped I think this is a good point to talk about going from chandrian 2 to chandrian 3 I remember remember seeing the guruji interview where you said I think for one year you did an analysis on what could have even been done even better yes uh can you briefly tell us in like three or four points what you know was figured out in that one year I know three or four points is too less but for the sake of so we know that uh most of the mission was very very very much achieved for example the rocket put the satellite in the perfect orbit it took from that orbit to raise the orbit to reach the moon we lowered it to 100 kilometers we initiated the Lander Landing only towards the last phase we had a tumbling of the rocket and it did not touch only just 300 M so we understood the problem is a very minor problem but then we went into deep we understood the minor problem always manifest in many ways this is a way in which all complex technological problems appear we call it window of opportunity suppose you imagine a room then there is an outer room another room outside a third room outside there are rooms around the rooms you and there are windows aligned if you open a window you can see next window if you open that window you can see a third window if all windows are open then the what is inside the room can escape through it we call it a failure it's a failure propagate if one of the window is closed it cannot propagate it will get contained so no failure happens if if one of the window is open anyone if at least one of the window is closed the failure doesn't propagate a failure happens only when multiple windows are open and they not only open they are aligned to each other they to if they randomly placed still you cannot see outside so when they come aligned like that failure happened so we looked at in this case which are the windows that were opened and how they got aligned so this makes a lot of know analysis some of them are related to Software some of them are related to the assumptions that we went into the designing of that software some of went into the performances of the engine whether it was in the at the right level or it is up or down so we found at least five different elements of it got aligned to make this failure happen if one of them has not happened this Landing would have been perfect it was a fantastic finding and what we did is after finding it we have to prove it that this is how it happened these are all hypothesis no un like a car accident I always tell I cannot collect the car and bring back to find out whether the brake failed or you know the site the Lander is still on the moon I couldn't bring back so I can have to synthesize a case by computer simulations or by mathematically then we have to prove it so we created another set of Hardware we tested it and then found out where it has gone wrong and we proved the hypothesis is like this and we found it is find out correct this is why they say rocket science is the most difficult science it is difficult and many of times I can tell you even in the first year we couldn't find all reasons and the real one of the very crucial failure case was discovered only on the fourth year after we realized end flight hardware and we were testing it on a on a fine day a new issue was on and we found out that is one of the most crucial issue and it was discovered after four years just randomly it was randomly this is where that's spiritual helping hand this is definitely yes it was destined to succeed but then it happens only when you put enough of effort they no little shop you simply keep quiet and think about it nothing will be shown in front of you right I have to bring up a slightly current affairs topic next which is uh sonita Williams ma'am U she's India's daughter in some ways she's an Indian American um currently stuck in space and all that the internet says about her is that the blame it on Boeing which is a private company going about their space Tech they say that there's a fault in Boeing space Tech and one of the solutions is again Elon musk's uh SpaceX is launching a rocket I think in September of this year so that is the rocket that's expected to help it is there anything that we can do at uh ISRO in India right now we can't do anything uh as a direct help uh because we do not have a craft that will go there up and save her that's not possible uh the only possibilities are from either from Russia or from us us has the crew Dragon vehicle which can go Ria has a so which can go and bring them so either of these only can save them I don't see there is a serious issue at this moment of course uh the Star Line the boing Starliner showed some anomaly but they don't want to take risk it appears to me because it has shown up some issues in the past even before launch you know the launches were postponed earlier many times and finally they took a chance and launched but they don't want to take the risk in return with return is equal more dangerous than onward flight so that's why they are keeping uh there and I I am I'm aware of that Boeing has been doing hundreds of test in the ground to prove they are good but the results review and clearances are not happening maybe they will go by the crew dragon and send it up and bring them back okay but that depends on space flight cannot be just like that happening so they have to schedule it and plan it and all that possibly that's all they are waiting for what's her reality right on Space according to you you heard their family speaking about her they said she's at her best most comfortable place on Earth so I'm must she must be enjoying chilling out there okay there's a good point to talk about gagan as well oh yes um the kind of curious question I have I have some cricketer friends uh who are very intelligent again they send their congratulations as well say krunal panda and hardik Panda and they sent in a question uh which is what are the personality traits that ISRO has looked for in the astronauts selected for the gagan mission and what was the first discussion uh about the selected astronauts see uh they are skilled people they are Air Force pilots fighter pilots and not just the other the pilots they were trainer of pilots and they have passed those exams they were working as uh first time trainer Pilots ready to fly a new aircraft that type of skill they have they have not skilled in one aircraft I know going through the biodata they they can fly any aircrafts including helicopters and other Fighters Transporters such skill one of the few of the bests in the series but when you come and work in ISRO as becoming an astronaut it's a different world they're not in the fi boundary where they have a specific task training Etc they become students back here they are learning Aeronautics they are learning rocket science they are learning the design of The Craft and mind you for the gagan they have come as the first time astronauts there are no nobody to train them no senior here so they are the creator of the gagan program and even the craft they are going to fly are going to be created by them they are going to advise us and help us to create what all features they need to have so in that manner they need to have many talents the first thing they are going to become engineers though there are fighter fighter pilots they are going to be trained in astronautics Aeronautics and mechanics machine Mission design everything so they will finally become as good of an ISRO scientist so that is ability to understand mathematics science engineering to certain extent a reasonably High extent so they are doing projects in that direction to train themselves wow okay and the second part of it is they are going to handle complex problem which demands lot of physical uh capability and that physical capability need to be coming through rigorous Training Fitness Fitness Fitness is one part of it but training to handle certain conditions like high acceleration by Fitness it alone it will not come some people are not capable of handling High acceleration even they are very fit so they are to have many capabilities also their psychological balance of handling situations they should work with people of different types they should be able to understand the critical situations and emergency happen they should not become Panic to do some things so there are many elements of psychological neurological tests and examinations and they need to work as a team of various people so how they work as a team how they contribute to this uh are they balanced in terms of their approaches in dealing with others so many such aspects are addressed okay yeah there was a very detailed selection process oh there are senior people from various levels like medicine medical they flying people Engineers they all work meet together to understand their them and select them but perhaps the base level requirement is the technical skill which is being a fighter pilot yeah because that itself you know puts them at some 80% level we need to look at only that 20% so your selection pool was just the Indian Air Force yes only Indian Air Force damn yeah and from that IND Air Force only the trainer pilot trainers trainers not even fighter pilots you know there is a dream that a lot of kids see all over the world yeah they say they want to become an astronaut when they grow up yes uh now because this is the first set of uh Indian astronauts um perhaps they'll be able to train the Next Generation well but even for the next generation of astronauts in India would you only select them from the Indian Air Force no no never see it's see we have just begun the gagan program the first of the astronauts are always from know flying squadrons of Air Forces but later you will see that they come from every Bo of Life there will be scientist there will be the mission specialist you know who technocrats who can do certain scientific missions but they will all have to go through the training because flying in a spacecraft of this nature going to space and surviving requires certain skills that can be acquired over a period of time but they don't have to be necessarily uh Air Force pilots in long term and I when we create a pool of 30 40 people in the coming days I'm sure common people who have who are genuinely interested to become an astronaut will be having an opportunity okay yeah back to talking about slight science fiction though oh yes have you watched Interstellar of course many times right yeah enjoyed it of course yes accurate depiction of space according to you not exactly it is a little bit of drama there it is needed for movie it's added H yeah but they they tried to be reasonable to the physics physics is not violated of course yeah in terms of how they described the black hole how they showed it yes are black holes a conversation that happened at ISRO not only conversation we have sent a satellite to studies black holes it's our expose set okay xray polarimeter satellite is a specific satellite to look at black holes and how black holes accrete or rather pull the material out of another star and study using x-ray uh that is emitted through the process through his polarization so we are black holes and we found new learnings of course we have seen there are many one already cataloged black holes are cataloged and this can be looked at by using it and study their nature and behavior okay yeah we have another satellite called astrosat which also looked at similar uh bodies like neutron stars nebula like that in your whole career what's the weirdest thing you have learned about outer space Oh no there are so many things if I I don't have an answer but I'll tell you see we all know that universe is expanding is it not you have heard about it so if you send a light beam out there it must be traveling forever so it's also going away along with the universe which is expanding so it will not the light cannot be stopped so if it is not stopped the light will continue to travel is it not so what we are talking to each other there is a light coming out of our face if it has a way to escape through this a small window in this room and go into space our image will be going into the space yes yes it will travel forever and if someone far away at say 5 billion years later capture the light in his eyes they will be able to see us it's a fact parallely while sitting here on Earth if we develop a technology we'll be able to see something from 5 billion years in the my story is slightly different here it's like this the point here even after we are dead and gone the light that came out of us will be still traveling in the universe and anybody looks at that light will be able to see us living talking to each other and if you just imagine that no it feels like a great dream for me and it is not just a dream it's a reality that's why when the James web Telescope launched recently to look at the origin of the universe was able to look at deeper into the universe and see up to 12 billion life years back what was the nature of the universe it was able to see and take images think about taking a photograph of something which existed 12 billion years back today isn't it surprising so when I think about it I really many of times I become speechless and think about it have you become more spiritual over the course of your journey I was always been I can only say when I think about it I become more spiritual yes okay you realize how small we are of course of course we are very very small right uh it has already been told by many people this is a question I've asked a lot of monks and I think you're nothing less than a monk in some ways what is the purpose of outer space why did God even create such a vast outer space he did not create for any purpose we are only assigning purpose to it he is there because he's there in in my eyes I felt like God created out of space to show his own size that I created this ever expanding thing which is infinitely large there is something different you know in terms of uh statements which possibly not my origin my own original thinking it may not be I can tell you that the omnipotent God that you are referring to is the universe itself there is nothing nothing else okay and uh the universe is there like this because he wants to feel it he or she wants to feel it so all of us are here for the experientially knowing the universe in different facets of it that's all the answer we human beings are here because the the the Universal Power wants to experientially know itself itself what is it being me that's it have any of our satellites caught any U signals from outer space which seem to have come from an established civilization none of us none of our SAT has an ability to even to pick them satellites generally don't have that ability generally such things are done by ground based measurements like radio telescopes or uh such uh scanners frequency scanners which are ability to look for such Fain signals have we received we do not have that such facility in this okay there are observatories of that nature which looks at Radio uh measurement of the universe for example in the Pune there is a gmr and the UTI has a telescope of that nature and glob world over there are such telescopes which look at radio telescopes looks at such phenomena or picking faint signals from other universes any idea of any faint signals we have read enough of that in many articles books Etc about it but I do not have firstand information or knowledge about it does it Fascinate you at all of course it is fascinating for example I was reading a book in that direction about one of the observator in Chile where they have been continuously observing listening about some of these not which has a pattern to see that the signals are of this nature are coming okay so there is some civilization out there sending us signals could be it could be a civilization it could be a electromagnetic noise coming out of celestial system itself for example supernovas or black holes they also know emit various types of um electromagnetic radiation it could be that for example you know a spinning black hole will be emitting certain amount of radiation at a fixed p pattern because their speed of rotation is constant so it has a directionality it has it is very high power electromagnetic beams it may be ejecting so possibly that that's what we are picking or they may be resonating each other and picking so we may get confused by physical activity to civilization we can't tell okay fine back to talking about is then yeah where our Technologies in India stand right now if there is a Mann Mission to Mars uh say mongan three or four four or five four or five so you'll send rows till then see uh we we are already having plans to send Rovers landing on the Mars which is we are thinking why not we do in the next mission so that's one of the goal uh sending human to Mars is a possibility but then today we do not have capability in terms of rockets you know the type of rockets that are required are much more massive so that has to be developed in the in the due course you mean the technology doesn't exist technology exist scaling up money money yes money investment so that's what is lacking I don't think that we are lacking in any technology can I ask you bluntly how much money is required huge money for example if you just want to go to moon and go and send a man on moon we have to spend at least two lakh cres for one for that first mission to take place okay that 2 lakh crores I don't need to spend tomorrow it has to be spent over some 25 years then we will have enough of stuff to do it then going to Mars requires money of that nature so whether we are ready to invest that much of money for a country like India it is possible still today though it may be a huge money with a nation with 38 million lakh CR worth of annual budget it's not a bad number spending one lakh CR I'm not talking about one or 2 L CR in one year I'm talking about in 20 years so it's a money affordable for us that's why we are talking about m mission to moon so with a nation which is going to become a third powerful economy of the world in the coming years in my opinion we should be willing to invest that much of money have you told PM Modi this I am telling continuously everyone wherever I get an opportunity what has he said he is he is all all for it I very sure about it but he is a very practical person and he will weigh merits of what we are going to do against various other priorities a nation is looking for so once I'm very sure about it a powerful economically Advanced Nation will naturally go on for it and his first step is First Vision is to make India economically progress Nation then all of this will follow there is no doubt about it that's just how economics Works you're supposed to First think wide then think deep in domains it will happen um what did PM Modi say between chandran 2 and 3 because I'm sure there was some stuff said to the whole team at esro behind the scenes so what was his message then see he has been all the time telling he supported us even after the failure he was there at our control center the next day he came consulted all of us that told us that though this Mission we could not softland much of the mission was accomplished and we are very near to it and we need to overcome and then he approved the second mission without his approval chra and would not have happened so you know his support is very much there and all throughout that there he has been taking regular reviews to understand what is the progress and on the chandrian 3 also he we briefed him convinced him that we are going to make this time so the support was always there from me okay I have seen enough of your interviews to know how much you highlight the um mental concept of frugality within ISRO yes yes in terms of at every level there is frugality for the sake of cost Effectiveness that's why these narratives of us using only 10% of the budget of NASA for the same projects so while we conceive a project while we think about a project we must bring in sensitiveness to the cost practicality practicality and we must also be sensitive to the part that is money is not brought from our own pocket it is actually public money taxpayers and once your taxpayers money is there we must be answerable to everybody suspend and this must be told again and again and again there is a nature of human being to think away from it because you don't understand see when you spend crores for your personal worth you may not be spending that much money government money when you spend you must be very conscious about it and that Consciousness puts us you to do don't do unwanted things and do only what is necessary to achieve the goal and that to how to the questions of reuse see I have in when I was a project director every Hardware after testing I sent back to the workshop refurbished is reused it in many many places what will happen is be thrown out it is anywhere tested Hardware throw away no never we never allowed where if you can repair and reuse it you'll repair and reuse it bring down the total overall know material procurement to a beest minimum even scraps I have worked on it to convert into useful things and use so once you have that thinking in your mind you'll find solutions for it jard yeah that's a part of isro's mindset it's a culture the mindset yes okay this is because of Dr Sarai of all the generations of people came after him also conveyed the similar you know sentiments okay I have to bring up a meme at this point oh yes uh I remember this went viral after uh chandrian 3 I believe okay so the meme went like avar film in 2009 the budget was $237 Million Interstellar was $165 million the Martian was $08 million and chandrian 3 was $75 million did this meme reach you yeah of course okay yeah how do you feel about that no we knew it already about the about the frugality the cost effess of work is well known but I don't know about the cost of those movies I still don't know how they spend so much of money to build a movie I must be educated on how to spend 175 million and still make a movie I think it's like frame by frame graphic design maybe somebody's charging them too much you know where the Graphic Design Studios are Mumbai mostly here in India yes so they they're charging them too much of course you'd be happier with even higher budgets right sure yes right no we need higher budget if you are To Go Achieve those goals that I mentioned we definitely need and and and it's coming I am very sure about it okay uh I have a dear friend abijit Chava I don't know if you've seen any of his podcasts he's you have okay cha sir uh so he is very very passionate about ISRO and he's taught me everything that I know about space and astrophysics also so a lot of this conversation is happening because of what I learned from him he feels fiery about the fact that ISRO deserves even higher budgets than it gets but you're saying that things are going upwards right yes definitely so expenditure monitoring tells you that you need to spend the money that is targeted for every month so there is a monthly Target and quarterly Target yearly Target monitoring everything is happening even with all of that we are still having excess yes okay so that means we are never short of money we are short of programs possibly if you add new programs we'll have more more money did everyone at ISRO watch Mion mongal yes yes all of us watched yes how did the ladies at ISRO feel about Mission mongal you would have seen them all of them in the chra program they were all there there are PL many many women part of this Mission but of course they don't do cooking in the control center how did Avro feel about Mission Mangal no it's a very know enter Entertainer so we look at that as an entertaining movie it gives some aspects of the life in his Ro yes back to astrophysics sir thank are you liking this conversation till this point having fun oh yes of course did you expect I'll ask you about aliens and this kind of stuff this is always a question most people ask you're bored of answering it no no every time I find something new to put into it okay we talk about Europa the Moon yes it's the moon of Jupiter Jupiter right apparently Jupiter has 95 moons that's a huge number but is there any kind of conversation that you have with other space agencies about exploring the moons of Jupiter not yet uh because um there were there were no experiments to go to asteroids right landing on Asteroids for example Japan used to do some of them you know Hayabusa and things like that so those were some of the discussions that we had I have so many questions because I have questions about asteroids as well uh but I'll actually first ask you a more uh Mangan related question so how long is the duration from Earth up till like the surface of Mars with where technology stands currently see the whole uh you are talking about the duration of travel yes the duration of travel is a function of the velocities that you can give to the satellite uh we had a very frugal approach to send craft to Mars because we did not have a rocket which was more powerful enough to send we used only pslv nobody in the world would ever done with a mission to Mars with a rocket or their glass so we had to place it around Earth progressively raise its orbit and increase its velocity and then finally take it to uh Mars so it took it almost uh 6 months to reach there okay so if you if you have a more powerful rocket I can put it right away in the very high elliptical orbit so that duration can be substantially reduced maybe to make it to 3 months but less than that is not feasible Is it feasible to place human beings within that spacecraft in the size of the spacecraft that we described not possible we have to design it separately okay yeah uh again this is we're talking about the future yeah in the future yes but realistically speaking do you think it could be a mission where within 6 months the duration of travel is covered you don't need 6 months months really six months is on account of whatever we did the type of mission that we did possible in 3 months with a very high rocket capability propulsion capability we can travel but the issue is if you travel too fast you will have a very high velocity at the end you have to reduce the velocity to enter into the orbit of Mars for that you have to kill all the velocity to kill the velocity you need to spend again fuel so it's the whole economy of going traveling is like so when you travel in a car you can apply brake how to break a satellite there is no way to apply Brak so the only way to reduce the speed of a satellite is to reverse it and fire the engine in the opposite direction okay and that will consume more fuel so you'll have to carry all the fuel from here up to that point to reduce its speed so what you do is you find out what is the most Optimum speed that will take you up there but don't have too much of velocity reduction you'll end up at the right velocity so this is a trick that you have to do by optimization Ro so the duration plus energy plus quantity of fuel that you need to carry everything need to be factored in the calculation what's the Innovations in terms of fuel that are coming up fuel that is the methane is the one of the beautiful fuel that is emerged you know methane chemical composition is carbon and four hydrogen CH4 M so you know Carbon is there in carbon dioxide carbon plus oxygen two oxygen you get carbon dioxide and hydrogen plus oxygen is water so H2 you p pull the hydrogen from water you take the carbon from carbon dioxide you get methane so what is remaining is oxygen from carbon dioxide and oxygen from water so if you combine water and carbon dioxide that means you take your soda water it is equalent to methane and oxygen okay so if you can do this split of water and carbon dioxide into methane and oxygen you get the fuel and oxid so this is called saat reaction and if you can convert this by elect electrical so you Supply electrical energy you can make carbon dioxide and water to combine together to produce methane and oxygen is this the same kind of fuel that will be used it's the same fuel used in all the Rockets now we are also developing Rockets with methane fuel but 30 years from now will it still even now even now the rockets that Elan musk is flying is with methane okay and we have already started our methane engine development program I'm just trying to visualize a reality where we have to explore the moons of Jupiter yeah for that we already have meane Rockets it's they're are capable of rock sending crafts to those those moons okay yeah uh but do you think there'll ever be a phase where we start using nuclear energy to nuclear energy is possible but this nuclear energy also requires a fuel it's not nuclear fuel nuclear fuel is used to only generate thermal energy right but rocket requires something to be ejected so they use hydrogen as a fuel so hydrogen you have to carry hydrogen and then eject after heating it has to be ejected so everywhere nuclear powered Rockets were developed in the past in 6070s development happened but everybody closed down but once again people have started developing in America why did it close down because uh you know after the Cold War time where lot of work was done there was a lull period in Space the L period happened after the moon landing all such highend developments came down and the only focus was on developing space stations mer space station came up in us International Space Station came up in in America the space shuttle came and traveling to Moon Mars Etc was not a low priority everything was on low earth orbit exploration and that did not require any nuclear propulsion and it was not safe because human beings are operating it but when you look at long-term human exploration going far away to other planets and Etc nuclear fueled Rockets are necessary okay so that's why there is a new thinking going to Mar then nuclear fuel Rockets will come up I remember when I was a kid there was a show on star world which was about the Mars rover I can't remember it was star world or National Geographic must have been National Geographic but uh I think America NASA had sent a Mars Rover in 2004 or 20 persan and many others they have sent what kind of data was collected by those Rovers and does NASA share that data with other space agencies nobody shares data with anyone see this data data are exclusive rights of them but some amount of data is always shared especially science Mission data after certain lock in period in every country after that they will share so by the time the most of the science would have already been published and uh many of the classified information they will never give so this is the nature of the so whatever they know about Mars today everything will not be known to us but there is things that America probably knows about Mars that India doesn't right now of course they will they will have okay and there's things India knows about the Moon that America doesn't that's a difficult question in my in my opinion there could be something yes wow okay uh have you met the leaders of NASA oh yes yes yes what is the energy in between you they're very keen to work with us I'm very happy about it in fact I visited headquarters of NASA uh administrator I had even the present administrator the former administrator I had a very strong connection and because of that such link only we have now enabled uh the government level also there is a strong Link in the uh on cooperating on Space uh President Biden and prime minister signed the pack to work on the International Space Station utilization and after that both of both of us the agency Chiefs met and we decided to do pursue it he signed the contract recently and then our astronauts are already undergoing training there now gotcha is there also must be an exchange of Technology there is no exchange of Technology because that is not easy in in terms of domain of Technology but we will work together on topics of each suppose we have a certain strength they have a certain strength we find a way to work together for example we are working on a satellite called Ana Nisa NASA ISRO synthetic appr radar so this is a radar satellite with two Radars one we call it l band radar working in L band and another radar in s band so L band radar is made by them s band radar is made by us so we both integrated gotcha then the software was written to use both of them together then the primary satellite was built by us and we are going to launch understood so this is a way of working together there is no sharing of Technology but sharing of competence to work on a common result got it uh it said that in 2029 there's going to be an asteroid that comes very close to the Earth and could be dangerous yes and there's also prediction for 2038 I believe parall through the show I have learned a lot about ancient history and I've learned about how cataclysmic events are a very regular occurrence in our universe um for example now the world of history is waking up to the fact that perhaps what we are taught in our textbooks is not the accurate beginning of human history and regularly uh after long intervals the Earth undergo some cataclysmic events so the most recent one was something called the younger dras impact where an asteroid was set to hit the earth near the Gulf of Mexico and that reduced the human population so much that it could probably be understood that uh human civilization had to reboot itself so what we learn about the indust valley civilization and the Mesopotamian civilization is actually studies about a reboot but perhaps human civilization was much more built out before 12,000 BC which is when roughly the younger D impact Theory uh takes place but I'm highlighting the younger D impact Theory to ask you about asteroids mhm because even a small asteroid that's like a kilometer wide that's very dangerous to have a hitting on Earth of that that size it's equivalent of being hit by a bullet as a human being it's a bullet for the Earth but a bullet that can destroy Humanity yes is this a conversation that ISRO has to have with NASA to collaborate and to help in fighting of that threat because this is a threat to humankind this not only with the NASA with with all the space agencies we have different fora where we discuss such topics it's called near Earth objects NEOS we call near Earth objects which are part of the solar system they travel as asteroids they come occasionally visit us they are in highly elliptical orbits comes out of the asteroid belt sometimes due to Collision they travel far away and then come very random paths they choose and as you said there there has been many such events in the history of Earth at least four or five of them are cataloged to have major events which created know total Destruction and rebooting as you said another recent one was one in Siberia I believe Siberia didn't didn't hit it actually passed over the forest and destroyed lacks of trees okay which created a huge boom and burning of all of that so this will happen in the history because our time spans are few hundred years we don't even record them but then it happens in every thousand few thousands of years but Point here is that if such an event going to happen now we cannot be spe mute Spectators we should do something so for this there are various defense discussions take place in various fora like un Koopas and many other International fora we have forums which will discuss this and many things have to be done one observing and understanding such an event is going to take place this is the first thing awareness about it are you able to track such objects using Radars and other ground based observations on a continuous manner because these are not easy to detect they come from anywhere direction we are not scanning and you know Globe around to find out so if you are not able to predict them then possibly suddenly they will appear in next 10 years they are going to hit what will you do so this is the first thing then it's prediction trajectory by locating it you don't know that which direction is moving then you have complex mathematics the solar system is moving the Earth is moving sun is moving and this is also moving so whether when when it passes Earth and this are going to come closer to each other this has to be exactly predicted if there are few millions of kilometers way they will never come in contact even if it passes in the path of Earth so this is next part of it third is if it is actually going to collide and if you know at least some 10 years ahead 10 years ahead you are to understand that in 10 years Earth moves around sun 10 times and it has to come and meet and you are able to predict that it's is going to hit then you can take some action what are the actions today you can actually deflect it you can explode it you can pulverize it using nuclear bombs or can send a rocket up there give a little bit of velocity so that it changes its path so if you give a small velocity there it will go in millions of kilometers it will expand in such a manner it will never ever come near to the Earth but sometimes if you go wrong in calculation you are put putting rocket up there will actually bring it closer to Earth if your calculation goes wrong so this have to be very carefully done it it seems to me like the Practical solution in this case would probably be nuking it no no the practical solution is to deflect it because it is moving a tremendous velocity and if you give very small velocity at some point it will it will go millions of kilometers away from Earth so that is a least energy because if you give an explosion for example nuclear explosion still some parts will come and hit Earth okay they will be still small parts sometimes the explosion may not be good enough to pulverize it into small pem some big boulders May remain so you explode a 1 kilom size asteroid it cuts into two parts two half a kilometer what's the use wow still it is dangerous even if it cuts into two 250 250 M size even then it is dangerous so there is no point in cutting down to Pieces it's better to deflect without causing much damage how can one pulverize it you can't do that if you have to do that you have to drill into it go to the core and exploit you so you should go see the movie that showed that no uh armagedon armagedon yes in that movie there were they were taking drilling machine going to so such things you should do but that's not a practically feasible solution what about these two points as 2029 and 2038 no they are estimated to be going past Earth not very not going to impact Earth uh they are far away still but then if your calculation is not correct if there is a possibility of small error in it computer transation error is good enough it can come and hit you so you should continuously watch from now on because it has a potential to threaten and you the whole discussion is go and study them because asteroids come very close to Earth you send a satellite up there go observation collect some samples bring back to Earth and study the origin of material so this is what is going on now not as a threat to Earth asterid mining yeah this is a another common internet topic it is like Moon mining right that there isn't that much information about it right now everybody speak about it because they think that asteroids are know made of gold platinum and high value mineral emeralds okay possible but how to bring it to Earth the complexity of bringing it to earth makes it extremely costly but I'm sure then there will be a technology development over a period of time which will be much more cost effective but the challenge is still there is that it is moving at tremendously high speed energy possessed by it very high you are to slow down to bring it to Earth that's still a techn technical invisibility and then if you do it you make the money which is already present on Earth see anything which is in Surplus will have no value you look at gold suppose it was available like steel will it value this much you'll be making your grills out of gold only if it was that much plenty available the Rarity makes it precious no right so let it be let it remain rare uh again you know what I'm visualizing after a lot of the sections we've covered on this episode yeah uh is the role of AI and Robotics because I've had conversations with uh technologists on the show who say that yes we're talking about how AI is growing I'd also love to know if you use chat GPT or any of these platforms for any of your work that's one part of my question but uh AI is also progressing becoming better it might reach a point of artificial general intelligence uh where it becomes even more capable then there's conjecture about how AGI could possibly help the world of science for human kind like it could help us progress science much faster by getting us faster solutions by being sort of an assistant to scientists and then parall robotics is also developing very strongly as a field so when AGI combines with robotics um I mean for lack of a better reference point I want to make people think about science fiction movies with robots not the negative ones but the ones where they've shown a positive future for humankind uh this is called cyber Punk versus solar Punk cyber Punk is a world where you show dark future like Black Mirror the show and solar Sol Punk is we show a bright future so I think if you approach uh technology from a solar Punk perspective and we're able to use robots combined with AGI a lot of our problems about space exploration might be solved I think you said it now many times I also think about it for example if you want to go climb Everest why go to space if you want to climb Everest it's not possible for any of us that easily know but if you don't really experience it what will you do I I thinking that I will send an robot up there and the what the robot experience I will experience and that is possible tomorrow with all this Advent of Technology if the sensory perception of a robot like the vision the smell the touch and the feel and the temperature and the wind on flowing on your face if if a robot is feeling and if I can get the feel into my mind then I am experienced sitting comfort of my room I can climb the Everest I can go to Moon I can go to Mars so the progress of Technology will enable you to experientially know things you don't have to be physically available so this is possible by integrating sensor perception through robots into your neurological system through brain I think these are happening now so this is one change of Technology progress I believe which is going to happen and possible explorations of other planets will be robotic in nature and human never will never need to go then we'll be able to answer questions about mining yeah all that will'll be able to answer because the risks will be much much lower the sending human beings are extremely costly extremely risky and the issues of uh the danger accidents all of come but then if you can know experientially without going actually going there the whole idea will be different in one of your interviews I think you had mentioned that sending humans out for Missions is much more beneficial than sending a Rover right no doubt about it but up to a time when Robos are inferior to humans but there is a point then robot will become Superior to human so you I am not telling the robot will be tomorrow's Robos will be incapable as a human it will have the intelligence it will have the perceptions the feel the behavior you won't be able to distinguish from a robo and a human there will be a time that will come yeah based on all the scientists have spoken to and all the entrepreneurs have spoken to um who was studying the field of AGI and Robotics I think this is the 2040s according to me would you agree I agree that in the 204s we could easily be sending robots no doubt about it and robots are doing much better functional capability than a human being the only thing is that it may not have the that you you talk about the you know making distinction between various emotional aspect of that the human beings are capable of it may not ever happen and it will never have the intelligence of a human being it will never have but it will have capabilities far superior to human beings the dexterity the ability to do things uh at situations uh all these capabilities will be much more Superior even for a operating Robo you know uh robots are much more capable than human being to connect dissection cutting doing threading and everything it can do it much better than human being so they are already becoming better but it may not replace human beings the human beings are to be in the back back end to do what the work by the robo controlling it from Earth controlling it yes are we able to send signals that far signals will always travel electromagnetic speeds so that distance doesn't matter now as I mentioned about light travels forever every signal also will travel forever but it'll expand in the as a sphere right it's like the source of light will expand like a sphere its intensity will come down but it travel forever I saw a YouTube video some time ago it was about the size of the known universe and they show this massive Circle to represent the whole size of the universe but then they also show a small globe on that and they say that this is where the furthest electron magnetic signal from Earth has possibly reached and that's maybe not even like 2% of the whole universe yeah right I mean I might be getting the numbers wrong it's is true because the the whole universe was created 13.8 billion years back the Earth came only a few billion years back so you can count only from that point okay um robots uh asteroid AI we were talking about AI quite a bit I think we didn't speak much about it how it using AI today okay AI has come into every every part of life now it's AI is then your mobile phones object identification speech synthesis uh huge data handling I think all of these are AI really so in nro we are working on AI within very many areas for example one of the very evident area is image processing satellites take images our observation satellite take continuously images are taken and images are sent back to Earth and on ground that the computers analyze and then convert it into useful products but if AI can be applied on these images we can do many more things for example if you take an image you will find it'll contain trees contain roads people cars so many objects and if this can be identified by the computer by itself and say this is a car and uh this called object identification this is one of the easiest way that uh AI can work on an image and if you are suppose you are doing a satellite for SP or much for example you want to do surveillance and you want to look at only troop movement nothing else you are interested you are not interested in the terrain or anything you are interested in troop movement and the satellite will be equipped by an a engine to look at only for troops it can identify human it can identify tanks it can vessels or any ships or aircrafts and then give a warning to the downline without even image downloading then it will improve the throughput and it can continuously do this with the assume there are hundreds of satellites then entire area can be survived every person's movement can be tagged and you can look for it what is happening you can do for animals you can do for your fright movement you can look at for agriculture you can look at for you can use it for healthare so this is one of the use that we are trying to use how AA can be used we use it on uh rockets for analyzing its data on board and decide whether the rocket is performing very well use AI engine to check whether everything is working well if there is some fault scene how to correct it switch over to something else or destroy the rocket in case it is uh know not worth to continue or about the mission when crew is traveling so that crew can be saved so this is another area have you developed your own AI we are all developing our own wow we have many teams working across this road developing all this wow one of the capable Hardware is going to fly soon and such uh what I mentioned is already going to be launched we are developed in ground already AI is used in non-destructive evaluation you know nonest evaluation is x-ray you know your chest x-ray right you chest x-ray what the doctors after chest xray you look at it oh your chest has this problem that problem you have 2B can you detect it similarly we take X-rays of rockets hundreds and hundreds of xrays are taken for every rocket for various Hardwares and this x-rays look for defects in Hardware materials manufacturing Etc and we look at it and screen and and this this are Screen through the skill the people but if a AI engine if you feed this xray into an AI engine it will analyze and tell you in no time there are defects or no defs so this is another technique recently I came to know that if you supply your check xxray your TB weather is there or not can be detected then a tool will tell you whether you have TB it's not an easy thing by comparing lacks of results of patients this say tool has been developed so such a beautiful thing you know I think you mentioned it in this conversation itself that in the last 100 years technology has just exploded in terms of progress so it's I'm very curious to see what happens over the next 100 years uh whenever we speak to a military person or a geopolitical Observer they always mention Space Warfare nowadays parently there are reports that Russia is building some kind of nuclear missile which is capable of taking out satellites and when it comes to the military the one thing I've learned is that Wars are won or Lost based on logistical capabilities now that got me thinking about the modern day and modern day Warfare the only way we can understand modern day Warfare is by seeing what's happening in our Earth right now itself there's been an element of cyber there's been an element of drone Warfare already that really got me thinking about the role of satellites with respect to drones with respect to cyber warfare satellites are probably a very very key part of Wars nowadays they're part of peacekeeping nowadays not Wars they are not meant to create Wars but to prevent Wars I will say like that because the awareness of the situation is very important once you know that you are being observed you are being tracked you are being know looked at the adversaries will have hesitation to cause troubles for you so satellites can do many things it can observe situation as I mentioned it can track the borders it can look at the troop movements and give a communication it can help with weapon delivery so once you have a strength of having satellites to support all of this then you have the natural strength to prevent any adversaries to take advantage so that's a that's a positive part of it there a little tiny part of me that feels like ISRO has some very very important projects that are kept secret away from the public eye for good reason which are possibly even bigger than what is revealed publicly like the chandrian 3 but this is for the sake of our great nation security mhm so I think you should believe that and continue okay uh have you ever interacted with the Chinese space agency yeah yeah of course so we meet um generally We There are international agencies where we meet uh like International astronautical Federation where the scientific people from China and other nations also come and meet do they share any data information nobody shares any data with others no it's not unless it is for certain specific domains for example we share Earth observation data even with Chinese Chinese share their data with us so we have a bricks consortia where we put our satellites data into one common platform and all bricks Nation share each other so there are such mechanisms in place but in terms of Technology what are developed there there nobody will share okay um I have a dear friend his name is Balaji shasan he is one of the leaders of tech in uh he's from Silicon Valley originally but now Tech is also Global so he showed me a video of our first flying cars that have actually been developed in China it's basically big drones yeah they are nothing but drones yeah like they've taken drone technology and just made it big but flying cars have finally become a reality you know we we grew up dreaming of that reality there used to be a cartoon called the Jetson way back I don't know if you remember this men fly aircrafts are flying why why cars cannot fly exactly I mean that was the question we all had as kids but I guess this drone technology being developed now in the 2020s has led to the first actual flying car which is capable of carrying human beings around I also believe it is automated if I'm not mistaken no they are automated manual both are there piloted are also there yeah they're not in the form of cars they're mostly in the form of drones with the one two seater multi- seater does ISRO develop drone technology as well we don't work on drones but we make use of drones for many things but drone based such Scooters or other Mobility these all developed in iats there are startups who are working on it okay are you actively working with a lot of space Tech startups yes yes lot of them okay yeah happy with what's happening in the Indian extremely happy because in the last few years we could have seen almost 200 plus startups are come up in space sector which was only one maybe in 10 years back can you name some key ones that everyone should many I can name suppose you look at Rocket building startups the the one which comes to my mind is a skyroot and agnikul both are really doing well and both of them have done their first St launches from sadan Space Center and both are developing small satellite launch vehicles and all expecting in a year or so they will be ready for their launch uh there are there is another company called e e space who is developing a reusable uh rocket um then on the SAT satellite side there are many pixel is one then Dua space then application side there are like satua wasara um then mapma India mapma India and many others who have developed and made use of the satellite data why is the growth of this ecosystem important for ISRO it is important for the nation why I say should for ISRO because the space is such that it has a great economic potential which we have not explored till now see all the time we have been talking about technology going to Moon Mars and things like that but ultimately it has to provide an economic activity with the to to give job employment ultimately Revenue to the nation to sustain on itself so we know space can produce lot of business for example so for example you what your communication for example all the satellite communication is still satellite based but then you have terrestrial complimenting it so the satellite communication still continue to be very important and you are now going to have directec device communication fromo constellation you aware star link one web are examples of it so this is one commercial activity second is all the Earth observation satellite data that comes out is again a commercial product based on that there are lot of Industries working on it mapping geopal Services uh natural resource mapping then governmental projects like the roads and infrastructure development um Fisheries climate and weather models and climate satellit and climate advisories for various activities strategic users your GPS Services you know pnt Services PO navigation timing services all these are Commercial Services and the whole of the and to support it you have another set of commercial servic called establishing communication networks antenna systems know communic commanding and telec commanding and data processing networks computers chains the that economy is 70% of the size so if you look at the global space economy it is 400 billion US dollar annually 400 billion and our contribution is very small it's only 2% Indian contribution perhaps it's going to change our goal is to make you know increase it maybe fivefold the coming 10 years that's a plan to make it happen is not only ISO we need many other people to come otherwise is will continue to work on government grants no that's not going to make it scale up we need Industries who will work in all these sectors Industries who will build Rockets industry who will build satellites Industries who build antennas ground stations ground equipments providing services and all of this together will increase the scale of operation and ISRO will get more launch opportunities somebody builds 100 of satellites in India ISRO can launch them so that will be a scaling off of the activity I'm visualizing that the next generation of ISRO employees will be a much larger number of people space employees space employees yeah but okay specifically when you're when you're hiring at ISRO or when you're promoting people at this promoting people for doing space activity so if suppose I think of a boying coming up in India a company of that nature why not when you're hiring people at ISRO and when you are promoting a certain uh teammate what are the traits you look for in that person how does someone climb up the ladder in ISRO career wise two three qualities first competence in terms of academic Excellence knowledge but he may not know everything not necessary but he has an passion to learn very difficult to judge very difficult to gauge but with some questions we'll be able to understand second ability to work as a team even if he brilliant if he a loner it's of no use you must be able to understand uh others respect others work with others and then deliver as a team lastly leadership quality everybody will not be a leader that I understand but out of the many we recruit there will be some leaders those trades are very special trades it's uh it doesn't come by you know by recruitment it comes through training and if you through proper mentorship so if you have some aspect of that dedication capability we see we Mentor them on a continuous basis to make them leaders gotta I think we're almost at the end of the episode so when speaking for a while uh this is a National Space Day special how does it feel that the team which worked with you the team you were a part of has now created an event for the whole country special feeling for you I'm happy that we are we are we are a team that can always do such wonders I'm banking on them to do that okay how do you feel I'm uh expecting a wonderful event on 23rd uh August when honorable president will be there to inaugurate this function but this is not going to be one event this year it's going to be an annual event and uh just not one day event it's a period the whole of August we are making sure that we connect with the the society students science Community Ministries departments industry startups everybody uh so as to create the vibrancy the energy the enthusiasm of the success that we have in what message do you have for the public sir like what is isro's message to the Indian audiences because our whole country loves you like the moment someone even says the name ISRO there's a sense of respect and pride that every Indian feels so even on my way to the headquarters here today when I told the hotel staff when I was telling the airline staff that I'm going to esro people were happy for me that I'm getting a chance to come here that is how the country looks at this organization what's your message to the country it's a fantastic feeling it's a pride for all of us uh this has come out of the hard work of the entire Community with the support of the government so the inspiration element is very very important it gives believe in yourself a certain of confidence to the young people whenever I go to some schools in a village or some places I always find someone you know coming and say I want to join ISRO I want to come and become an astronot I want to do something for the country they they write mails and letters more than this type of Fascination I find that and desire of many people to come and work for the country is really fantastic and this is the change that has happened earlier nobody knew about it now after CH the the awareness is very high though we have been silently working the awareness is very important the awareness has two important one for themselves because it puts them on a higher pedestal on a higher level of confidence to expect second is it also gives us a responsibility to Envision biger so it's a win-win situation for ISRO and for the public okay uh just want to say it was the honor of my life to thank you so much I get some time with you sir thank you uh I can't tell you how happy and grateful my whole team is for you today I've been stopping myself from fanboying over you throughout the course of this podcast but just thank you very much sir there's uh been 800 podcasts we've created it's been a 9year journey for me and there were only 2 days that my mother said she was proud of me this was one of the days so just genuinely thank you so means a lot that you gave us your time I saluted you at the beginning I'll salute you at the end uh thank you for everything you've done for our country sir uh genuinely from our heart a whole generation is very grateful to all of you thank you for the support uh and the blessings uh we are going for a launch uh on 16th uh just after the Independence Day celebration uh that's the launch of sslv D3 is third development flight so your blessings needer for a launch and all for the all the launches that they are going to be this year all the positive energy sir from the whole country thank you so just thank you for everything uh really when you know foreign podcasts and all talk about ISRO it's a sense of Pride for all of us using social media within India uh I think there's a whole generation of space enthusiasts that wants to take this journey even forward because of all the work and hours that all of you have put in so thank you sir thank you once again thank you that was the episode 4 ladies and gentlemen honestly I was only prepared for this episode because of our countless conversations with astrophysicists specifically abijit chavas who has spoken about space to me so many times on the show these were all the questions that had formed in my head over the Last 5 Years space and space Tech are domains that interest me very much and it genuinely can't get bigger and better than Dr s somat being on the Run V show very big career day for me and possibly the biggest podcast of the Year for me so thank you to sir I hope he returns on TRS very soon because there's a lot more to discuss with Dr somat but until next time guys from rir and the team let's keep celebrating ISRO let's wish everyone a Happy National Space day and until next time from Ren and the team J Hind and we'll see you soon oh 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