Indian Space Exploration: Past and Future

Dr. Das. Thank you very much Dr. Praveen for the kind introduction and I thank all of the members who are watching this presentation live and very happy to know that you are so much interested to know or be a part of this future of the Indian space exploration. As I am going to speak about the space exploration that too about the future, the main question which I am going to impressed on this presentation is can our past guide to our future. So in this talk I'm going to delve in the early days of our space science program and then I'm going to speak about the space science program today and based on this the way forward. So coming to the early days of our space science program let me tell you India's space science observation and India's enthusiasm in pursuing space science in a formal manner, it dates back to early 18th century and you can see here a picture of the Madras Observatory which was since 1786 to 1899, which did a series of observations of the stars, the moons and eclipses of the Jupiter satellites and then you can also see the Kodakarna Solar Observatory 1899 onwards. and you are seeing this gentleman who is John Evershed working with the spectroheliograph at the Kodaikanal Observatory and these two institutions if you trace down their history you will be able to relate the history of today what we know as the Indian Institute for Astrophysics IAA which is located in Agalur and also you can see in the right hand side a picture of the Colaba magnetic observatory which has been since 1826. It started for the meteorological observation station at the Colaba, a place in Mumbai, and the magnetic observations were carried from 1842 onwards. As you can see here, a box in the red color, the building which you can see here, a hut, this was the place where the magnetic observations is to happen. So during this time, from 1700 something to 1800 something, the domains which we used to cover included the study of the planets, the moons. the stars, sun and Earth's magnetic field and we have to remember we were before the space era and we had to depend on certain instruments and telescopes which were deployed on the ground and we are getting the information from space by virtue of the photons which were coming or some signatures in the magnetic field of the Earth and some other agents which were carrying information from space to the Earth. Now you have to see the space science domains which predominated during 1900 to 1930. Planets, moon, stars, there have been studies from the cosmic rays, sun and Earth's magnetic field and there there was a time when radio waves were in the vogue and people used to know how to generate and harness radio waves and we have to remember the importance of the different world wars which happened which made use of the radio waves for the strategic purposes. And there was an observation of the deflection of radio waves in the atmosphere. And that was the time people were not knowing about something called ionosphere was existing. And the deflection of the radio waves from the atmosphere gave rise to a brand new branch of science, which is known as ionosphere. And during 1920s to 1930s, there have been... significant work in the domain of ionosphere and I must remember the contributions of Professor Shishir Kumar Mitra who was the disciple of Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose who is remembered as the first use of radio waves in India to probe the ionosphere and this can be treated as the remote sensing of the ionosphere through bottom sounding and his seminal works are still still available if you are some of you are interested to know his contributions you can definitely go through his papers and you will be able to see that in 1920s, 30s and beyond during these decades how much important work he did for the study of the Earth's ionosphere that too by using radio waves as a remote sensing agent. In 1947 India was independent from the British rule and something interesting and something inspiring was happening so if you delve into the history of the country's space program you will be able to see even in 1940s the pre-independence there were two brilliant and valiant songs of mother India. One was Dr. Homi Jahangir-Bhabha, who understood the importance of building a outstanding schools of research, such as some other countries are fortunate to possess. And the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research was founded in 1945. And Dr. Vikram A. Sarabhai emphasized on the need of becoming second to none in the application of the advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society. and Physical Research Laboratory was founded in the year 1947. And during the period 1940s to 1950s, that is both during pre-independence and to a certain extent post-independence, there have been lots of experiments using scientific balloons. And today the National Balloon Facility still sends lots of scientific balloons which go up to the altitude of 30 to 40 kilometers with scientific instruments. And in the picture you are able to see Dr. Bhavik Jahangir Bhabha with some balloon board experiments from PIA for Hyderabad. And during 1940s to 50s, cosmic ray studies is to predominate using scientific balloons. And during 1956, it marks the establishment of the ionospheric field station under the University of Calcutta at Haringhata, about 50 kilometers north-east of Calcutta. And if you see the geographic code coordinates. It is about 22 degrees north and 88 degrees east. And you would imagine that there is an offset between the geographical coordinates and the magnetic coordinates. And this Horinghata is very much important because if you see the physics of the ionosphere and you will be able to come across some term called equatorial ionization anomaly. So what happens in the equatorial ionization anomaly, you see some enhancement of a total electron content in the north side and the south side of the magnetic equator. It peaks around 15 degrees north and 15 degrees south of the magnetic equator and if you have such an atmospheric field station, it will be able to study so many parameters of this kind of phenomena which happens because of lots of interesting phenomena which are basically interplays between the generation and annihilation of ionosphere because of the solar forcing. and also the influence of the Earth's magnetic field and also the influence of the Sun's magnetic field. So, Professor Shishir Kumar Mitra has to be fondly remembered for the establishment of this. And in 1960s, the Tumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station was founded and the place is of scientific importance as many of you are aware. The Tumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station is right under the magnetic equator and also beside that in the sea coast which is very conducive for sending scientific rockets to access the upper atmosphere and the atmosphere and being at the sea coast it is all the more conducive to have a launch pad there and dr vikram sarabhai founded the sounding rocket experiments at tals and if you have to correlate with whatever i have told a few minutes back and that use of radio waves to study the ionosphere was nothing but a remote sensing study of the ionosphere, whereas if you are sending a sounding rocket to study the ionosphere, it is an in-situ study of the ionosphere. So this is how the program evolved and in 1960s the vision and importance of the space program was apprised to the leaders who used to matter on those days and the early steps were taken by sending different sounding rockets from some other countries and the first rocket launching station was established as Tumba and the inaugural launch of the sounding rocket happened with the scientific payload in the year 1963. In this picture you are able to see a few stallovers who have shaped the Indian space program and you can see how a nose cone of a sounding rocket is to be carried to the launch pad on bicycle and on 29th of November, as I mentioned, in the year 1963, the NICAPASHA rocket took off from Tumba. The manufacturer was Aerolab, a company in the United States later, which was converted to Atlantic Research. And then something happens. Somebody else launches rocket from your launchpad and this provides a very good opportunity for the development of indigenous sounding rocket program. and India's own sounding rocket RH-75. RH stands for Rohini and Rohini is nothing but the Rohini constellation. It came into being very soon and you can see in the picture Professor Vikram Sarawai with Y.J. Rao examining a Rohini 75 rocket here. And a very important event happened in 1968 on 2nd of February where this launch pad, Tumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station was dedicated to the United Nations and this is the landmark in the history of the space program. not only because of the reason that it is opened up to the global scientific community to perform research on the ionosphere and the upper atmosphere but also it is not about sending simple rockets because when you have to send the rockets, a rocket you have to have a peripheral system like tracking system, radar, telemetry, telecommand, everything the peripheral systems were set up gradually. It was conducive to set up that kind of a an ecosystem to have a full-fledged sounding rocket launch station once it was opened up to the United Nations and that was a very strategic step. You are not only growing your own country but you are growing as a mankind and in this process you are helping your own space program to grow. You have to remember in 1968 India was only a 21 year old newborn independent nation and in a new independent nation, there have been all kinds of problems, what you can think of. Problem of governance, problem of health, problem of education, everything. And here, seeing the dream of a space enabled nation and seeing the dream was not enough, it was also a collective effort of the masterminds during those days, how to open up and how to make use of the expertise which were lying elsewhere to build up TALS. as an international facility. And during 1975 to 1976, we grew with the international cooperation. Dr. Sarabhai's dialogue with NASA led to the satellite instructional television experiment to explore using satellites for education. You will remember that in India, the television started sometime around 1970s, and there have been demonstrations. I have heard from my seniors that there have been demonstrations where... There have been live performances of some music and there have been television skips somewhere and communication was happening using satellites. And people were amazed how can this happen because in those days, television transmission was not a very common thing in the country. And this was very much required to show to our leadership that if we have our own satellite program, what all good can happen. in a country like India which has a very good extension in latitude and longitude how satellite technology can help to educate the people in different facets of life. So for that this site experiment had a tremendous impact and also there have been an experiment with the advanced technology satellite again another satellite from the US which was used for the aerospace studies and the space physics division in the Vikram Sarabhai space center took a lead. And the Space Physics Division now in the 1980s, it has been transformed to a full-fledged laboratory, which is the pride of the nation today, which is known as the Space Physics Laboratory jewel in the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center. So a point to be noted here is our Indian space program has started not from the activities of defense. It has started from two motivations. The first motivation was from science. and the second motivation was societal applications and this site experiment and the aerospace studies with ATS stand testimony to these two motivations which have nucleated the entire space program. If you see what happened during 1960s to 1980s, there have been lots of balloon-borne experiments led by Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Physical Discovery. and hard X-ray astronomy. When I say hard X-ray, it was something around greater than 20 KV X-rays. They were studied using scientific balloons. And there also have been experiments with sounding rockets. And again, the lead was taken by PRL and PIFR for X-ray experiments, 1 to 10 KV sources from Thumba and Shiharikota. And also, the Space Physics Division has taken a lot of initiative for atmospheric experiments and also experiments related to the upper atmosphere. Also, the Physical Research Laboratory has taken these as platforms to study the activity of the sun and its influence on the cosmic rays physics. So these two decades, 1960s to 1980s, went on with lots of experiments on Venus and sounding rockets. And here something very inspiring happened. What happened was, if you have to study anything, you have to build instruments. And when you have to build instruments, you have to remember these instruments are not something which has to work on the earth. It is not a commercial product. It is a product which has to work in space. When you are sending a hardware to a balloon which goes to an altitude of 30 to 40 kilometers, it has got its own challenges. When you are sending an instrument through a sounding rocket and it is going to a few hundreds of kilometers above the wind sea level, it has got a few more set of challenges. And these challenges of making scientific instruments for the Belur platform and the Saudi local platform were very effective to go to the next step. And the next step was to make our own satellites Aryabhatta in 1979, which took off from a Soviet launch facility. And the training which the Indian scientists have received to make instruments for balloons and the sounding of the platforms have been proven handy when they started making instruments or scientific payloads for satellites. And this was completely designed and fabricated in India and launched by a Soviet Cosmos rocket in 1975 on April 19th. And you have to see what was happening apparently in the launch vehicle program of our country. So far we have had sounding rockets and I have told you how did we start our Rohini sounding rocket program from Rohini 75. 75 means you know the diameter in millimeter of the first stage of the sounding rocket sounding rocket has got two stages uh booster and the sustainer the 75 tells about the diameter of the booster and then the need was felt to have our own satellite launch vehicle because both balloon platform and the sounding rocket platforms have got their own limitations. The balloon could give you an altitude of 30 to 35 kilometers. On the other hand, the sounding rockets were giving you an altitude of a few hundreds of kilometers. But you have to remember, the sounding rockets were providing access to a bigger altitude but for a very limited time. It is to go and fall and that time available for any scientific instrument was very limited. In balloon, you could have a prolonged exposure to space but not beyond an altitude of 30 to 40 kilometers. So this necessitated some platform which we will call a satellite and we should stay in space for a prolonged duration and perform scientific experiments and because of this we took the help of soviet to launch our Aryabhatta the first satellites. Why don't we have our own launch vehicle program? And that's how we had our SLV-3 which came up in the timeline of 1970, 1980 and which was capable of placing a 40 kg of scientific satellite to a lower orbit. So when it's a lower orbit it has a certain number, it is around typically some 400 to 500 kilometers from the mean sea level. And the Rohini series of satellites were launched. using SLV3, Rohini Technology Payload RTP, which is basically a camera which was used to monitor the launch vehicle stages, but it could not be tested in the orbit. Then we had Rohini RS1, RSD1, D, you have to remember D stands for development. Then we had Rohini RSD2. These are all cameras, but you have to remember very silently something if a revolution was happening in Rohini RSD2. we were sending a visible and then inferred imaging. We are appreciating the importance of going beyond the visible wavelength and today any scientist appreciates the possibility or the potential of using the other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum especially to do something which we cannot do with the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Today when you monitor the earth or the vegetation on the earth or something which is very much prominent in infrared, you send an infrared camera. And this is very suddenly how did we start in the domain of exploring the other part of the electromagnetic spectrum. And then you see 1981, we have had India's first geostationary satellite, APPLE. APPLE stands for Alien Passenger Pierrot Experiment, which is 670 kg. So there was a big jump and it was launched into GTO, the Geo Transfer Orbit, by the third development of ESA's alien vehicle. We have to remember that 670 kg was a big number to us in 1981. So far we had only SLB-3 which was capable of launching up to 40 kilometers to lower growth orbits. But when we are speaking about 670 kgs we had to go to some other agencies and that's why we had to send it using an alien vehicle and which was boosted into geosynchronous orbit geo by apogee motor pairing of ISRO and it was derived from the fourth stage motor of SLB-3. Lesson 2 we learned is like this. SLV-3's, the four-stage motor was now used in the satellite, Apple, to have a transition from the geotransfer orbit to the geosynchronous orbit. That is how the knowledge gained in one domain is being used in the other domain. So everywhere some lesson is there to be learned and maybe these lessons what we have learned in our past and that's why precisely I'm speaking about the past. which can have answer to some of the problems which we're facing in present and which we're going to face as key indicators for future and valuable hands-on experience in designing and development of three-axis stabilized geostationary communication satellites were established and orbit raising maneuvers station keeping all these things we have at past and when we were having the operations of the Apple payload, Apple satellites. Then between 1987 to 1994, we were having gamma ray astronomy experiments and upper atmospheric studies through the stretched Rohini series or SOS satellites. The previous one was Rohini and since we are continuing it, we are calling it a stretched Rohini series. And we were having quite a few satellites, SOS A and SOS B. SWAS-C, SWAS-C2, and you also have to pay attention to what was happening to our launch vehicles in parallel. So from the satellite launch vehicle we have developed the ASLV or the augmented satellite launch vehicle which was capable of launching or placing a 150 kg class of satellite to the lower orbit and a few new technologies were demonstrated here like strap-on technology. What are the strap-ons? You see in the picture there are two smaller rockets. on the either sides of a core rocket and these smaller rockets are called strap-ons and they offer you a more lift-off thrust where you have a higher payload to launch and there were many other augmentations like inertial navigation, closed loop guidance, so on and so forth and this itself is a topic by itself and let's not delve into this thing let's move forward with what was happening in the realm of science. And so in the early days of space program and when the Rohini, the stretched Rohini series of satellites were very successful in studying the Gamma ray experiments, and there were a few thought processes which were haunting our astronomers. The thought process was like this. This Gamma ray bus were basically some energetic process which could happen in anywhere in the sky. Some energy process giving rise to some photons. and which is falling in the regime of the gamma rays in the electromagnetic spectrum, you never know where this is going to happen. It could happen here, it could happen here, it could happen somewhere else. So for that to be captured, what you need, you need a wide angle system wherein you can capture these events wherever it happens. But the community of the astronomers, they said no, we need something extra. We need to have the technology to study. some specific stars, not something a wide angle, whatever comes from whatever directions we're happy with it. So we need to study specific targets in the sky, like X-ray astronomy to study X-ray binaries, and for which we need very precise pointing, which is possible through a technology called inertial pointing, and need more mass and power, because if we have some system which will offer you a very precise pointing. it will have its own control system, it will have its own electronics, and this will definitely have its own mass and power. And they have lots of developments. and there have been inertial systems for attitude control and star sensors for reference. What are the star sensors? Basically you're having specialized cameras which can look at some part of the sky and when you see the patterns of certain stars you understand from the effeminates of those constellations that you are looking into. So this is a way of understanding which is inspired by the early navigators who used to sail in the sea looking at the sky. detect their navigation. So star sensors are spinons taken from history and associated control systems. Now we are having ASLV, Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle, and this was not enough because we need more mass. Then our launch vehicle program also had progressed and by the time we had PSLV, the Porous Satellite Launch Vehicle, which was capable of launching 1750 kg of satellite to one SSO. What is SSO? SSO stands for the Sun Synchronous Orbit. Sun Synchronous Orbit is an orbit such that if you are having a satellite in a Sun Synchronous Orbit which is almost polar, not exactly polar, it is almost polar with some limited inclination which offers you the same local time when you are passing on a given location. If you are having a Sun Synchronous Orbit over India and it is designed in such a way that it will pass over India only at 12 o'clock noon, it will continue to do so. That's why it's called a Sun-Sequoia Orbit. And on the Sun-Sequoia Orbit, in the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, you had one scientific experiment which is called Indian X-ray Astronomy Experiment, IXAE, which was on board the IRS P3 in 1996. And you have to remember that this was not a dedicated science satellite. This satellite was planned for some other purpose, but this IH-AE was a co-passenger in that whole satellite which has done lots of very good experiments on bright X-ray binary star systems including X-ray pulsars and stellar mass black hole candidates. And this has given, even a lot of PhDs in astronomy. And I should say this is one of the very matured space-based astronomy which was done in our country in the previous century, 1996. And you have to see what was happening in the world, the global scenario. During that time, the Hubble Space Telescope was already operational and the Crompton Gamma-ray Observatory was also operational. Both were from NASA. And getting ready were the Chandra X-ray mission from NASA and the X-ray of Newton. from ESA, European Space Agency. And we have flown the IXAE experiment when we were planning for the next. And doing something is not to be done for the sake of doing something. The Indian scientific community was very keen to understand or to plan how to contribute resourcefully to the global endeavor. Something has to be done in the scenario when Hubble Space Telescope is already there. CGRO is already there and two other observatories are getting ready. So they have a lot of deliberations on how to do some cutting edge thing. One solution was to have more sensitivity, more resolution, but you have to remember more sensitivity, more resolution. This requires a lot of other technological advances and maybe that time we were not ready with those things. So one very important idea was why don't we go for multi-wavelength astronomy. Those who have understood physics, you will understand that every part of the electromagnetic spectrum has got some story or the other to tell. When you are observing a source, maybe a star or anybody or any blackbody radiation source and it was carrying through the electromagnetic radiation in different small small boxes, every part of the spectrum has got something to tell. And just imagine if you can place a satellite which has got a suit of instruments. Each instrument is catering to different part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Won't it be an ingenious approach to this? And precisely that's how the astrocyte was born with capabilities of near and far ultraviolet, soft and hard extra bands. That's how we have come to the today's space science program. So when I speak about AstroSat, it was launched in 2015 and it still continues, which has already got many credits of science. If I have to speak about AstroSat, it is such a topic, it cannot be completed in one lecture. AstroSat is still active and it is still producing a lot of very inspiring and interesting scientific results and lots of PhDs. Now, I have to mention about a very important facet of the Indian space program and I have to go back a few years in time. While Astroseq was launched in 2015, let me take you back in the year 2003 and 2004 and that was the time when our planetary exploration began. In August 15, 2003, the then Honourable Prime Minister of India announced the Chandrayaan-1 mission. And in November 2004, in Udaipur, in a conference, Honourable President of India said, it is not enough to simply go to the moon. Why don't we have something that would impact on the moon, touch the moon, and we'll do some science. And that's how the idea of the Moon Impact Probe was mooted. And not only the idea was mooted, it was... materialized and the moon impact probe happens to be the first human-made object from Asia to have touched the moon and this is the first ever successful observation of the daytime lunar exosphere. When I say lunar exosphere, exosphere is a term where the atmosphere becomes so dilute, so sparse that you can very well say practically there is no atmosphere. above a few hundreds of kilometers but that condition starts in moon right from the surface and this was an incident and this impactor was made to impact almost at the lunar pole. You can see here in this picture whatever moon impact probe was made to impact and you can see the same picture how Chandrayaan-3 soft landed. Maybe I will tell you about the Chandrayaan-3 after a few minutes. So this moon impact probe was very successful. in studying the lunar exospheric noble gases like argon, neon, helium and also molecular hydrogen. And this experiment has given the first detection of the lunar exospheric water vapor H2O. And let me speak about the Chenryan series of experiments because our lunar program is a bit streamlined. Chenryan-1 mission was launched in 2008, Chenryan-2 in 2019 and Chenryan-3 in 2023. If you see the first two missions, there have been the orbiter based missions, although we planned the lander and the rover in Chandrayaan-2, we didn't succeed because of some technological leashes. But Chandrayaan-1 and Chandrayaan-2 have given a very good opportunity to study the moon from the orbiter. And you understand when you study some celestial body from the orbiter or a satellite, it gives an opportunity to study that body as a whole. global sense. On the other hand, when it came to Chandrayaan-3, it was a lander and this, because it was a lander and the rover, this provided the ground truth of the moon at the landing site. So these two were a bit complementary set of experiments and speaking about Chandrayaan-3, this experiment was having three modules, the lander, which was named Vikram. Vikram was having instruments to study the ground vibrations of the moon and seismicity and near surface plasma environment. Also the thermophysical properties of the lunar regolith. There was a rover, the name of the rover was Pragan. Pragan is a Sanskrit name which means wisdom and Pragan had two scientific instruments, alpha particle spectrometer and laser induced spectrometer which was studying the elemental composition of the regolith. And there was a propulsion module which carried the lander and the rover composite to the Moon's orbit. And the propulsion module was containing an instrument called SHAPE which was nothing but a spectro-polarimeter which was observing the Earth from the Moon's orbit, Earth as an exoplanet. So this is something interesting because when we have an exoplanet program, exoplanet means some planet which is not in our solar system, some other solar system. And if you are sending a space mission, perhaps you will be looking for certain signatures. And especially, signatures of certain, you know, certain facets which tell about whether this particular exoplanet is having a potential to host life or Earth-like exoplanets. So that can be facilitated if you study your own Earth as an exoplanet from some other platform. So SHAPE was serving that purpose. Because of the paucity of time, I may not be having enough opportunity to tell about the scientific outcome of each and every mission. So, this particular slide summarizes the measured outcome from each of the science missions. Chen Lei and Guan had a remarkable discovery about the lunar water, both in the form of lunar water ice on the surface, subsurface and exosphere, but also the interaction of the solar wind with the lunar regolith, discovery of different lava tubes, different kinds of populations of ions in the wake region of the moon and also Cherian 2 had very important discovery class of findings in terms of an ambiguous detection of water rise in the moon surface. First ever global study of the exospheric lunar argon 40. Lunar argon 40 speaks about the radioactivity within the moon because argon 40 comes from radioactive potassium 40. Because of the radioactive decay, potassium 40 becomes argon 40. And synthetic aperture data based on the surface sub-surface features, hydration. Hydration means something to tell about the underground water ice of the moon and global elemental maps like aluminum, sodium, silicon, magnesium, chromium and also some studies of the sun from the Chandrayaan-2 platform and many more. I can go on telling and it is going to be an exciting journey but today I'm not going to be stuck up by telling about Chandrayaan-2 alone. Mars orbit animation is yet another inspiring journey which has gifted the first ever study of the winning side exosphere of Mars. First detection of the suprathermal argon-40 in Martian exosphere. This is very important because suprathermal means somehow we understood that certain argon-40 atom were having a very, you know, actually high energy. It has picked up from some sources and if some atoms and molecules in and the atmosphere of a planet picks up some very high energy. Does it not indicate that it has got a potential to escape the planet? So scientists say that ancient Mars had a thicker atmosphere, it had liquid water but today due to many reasons, many astronomical reasons, Mars has lost most of its atmosphere. Maybe this kind of experiment whatever we did with argon-40, super thermal argon-40 has given very good clues to understand what actually happened during the process which span over a few million years or billion years of time when Mars lost its atmosphere. There also have been studies on the dust storm activities on Mars, characterization of the polarized scales, Martian albedo studies, Martian geology studies and I must tell you this list is not exhaustive. I would like to emphasize here, this is only a very minimal thing which I can afford to tell you in a very minimal time to make you aware of how India has contributed to the global space arena in the realm of space exploration. After having told this fact that India has contributed significantly and which indicates that the globe has got lots of expectation from a country like India and that's how the future of the space exploration is the thing which we are going to emphasize in this journal. In the realm of astronomy and solar exploration, apart from AstroSat, you will remember that in 2024, we have sent ExpoSat, India's first X-ray polarimetry observatory, which is second in the world, which is going to give more insight into astrophysical processes of black holes, X-ray pulsars and neutron stars and other luminous extra sources. and this is capable of studying the polarization of light which is coming from some astronomical source and studying the polarization of the light from any source gives you some extra insight which is not going to be the case when you are simply studying the variation of the intensity or varying the spectrum of the radiation which is coming from a source. Studying polarization of a light gives you some insight about the magnetic field topology of the source or the medium through which it is coming because when photon passes through some magnetic field it undergoes some changes in the plane of polarization and in the degree of polarization also. Also speaking about the Aditya L1, the India's first dedicated solar observatory with a set of seven instruments. First time it is from the country. An observatory is placed in the first sun at L1 point of the India of the country. L1 points with the first Lagrangian point. You will know that between any two bodies, any two celestial points there are five points where there are equilibrium points of gravity, not only because of the gravity, because of the centrifugal force, there have been five points around the two-body system. And without discussing about the other four points, if I tell about what happens in the first Lagrangian point, it is very easy to understand because the gravitational forces between two bodies get nullified there. So Sun-Earth 11 point is a point where the gravitational force of Sun and the gravitational force of the Earth they cancel each other and it is located around 1.5 million kilometers away from the Earth and you know that the Sun-Earth distance is around 150 million kilometers. It is a very good observatory to study the Sun, the radiation particles of the fields which are coming from Sun. and also understand the triggers of the space weather and which also studied the solar storm, a very strong solar storm which happened in the month of May. Many of you are aware in this last year 2024 and you are also aware on the 6th of January this year, it marked the first anniversary of the insertion of the Aritel-1 spacecraft to the helio orbit around the first Lagrangian point. and the data have been released, the past set of data have been released and I take this opportunity to reach to all of you to tell do look into the data of the IETL one and teachers to encourage the students to have a look at the data and define some projects, some postgraduate level or even undergraduate level simple projects which you can think you can do using this sets of data which are available in our data center. So to speak about today what we have, all our exploration today are divided into four particles. The first particle is about astronomy, astrophysics and exoplanets. Another particle is about heliophysics and space weather. Another particle is the solar system exploration where you studying the planets, the natural satellites or the asteroids or the small solar system bodies. And yet another set of vertical, another vertical is the near earth. space and the domain of aeronautics where you study the physics and chemistry of the upper atmosphere, the ionosphere, thermosphere, bangladesh sphere region and when you say near up space it doesn't have any clear-cut definition what we call a near up space. The near up space is a space where you are having upper atmosphere, you are having the ionosphere, even people say the space between the earth and the moon and even the earth and the sun, they're also near up space. very very if any asteroid comes we start worrying if the space weather is very harsh in the near earth space we start worrying that is the space which have got direct influence on our well-being on the earth in terms of both science and also in terms of the space assets and this slide summarizes our journey so far whatever i have spoken about starting from the balloon bone experiment sounding rocket and isobus founded in 1969 and what all the scientific experiments we did, all are summarized in this slide where we stand right now. Coming to the end of my lecture, telling about the way forward, we have to plan for lots of other sophisticated kinds of space missions. We have lots of ground-based observatories and telescopes which are doing fantastic job. Even we will be very happy to know that our Ground-based telescopes have done fantastic work in studying the Sun and also discovery of certain exoplanets. But as you are aware, ground-based systems have got certain limitations and that's why we have to go beyond the Earth's orbit, beyond the ground-based system, go to Earth's orbit. And sometimes Earth orbit is not enough, we have to go to certain very specialized areas like we have mentioned about the past SANA, the Lagrangian point. Similarly, we may have to go to the second. Lagrange point which happens to be behind the Earth. And if you are in the second Lagrange point, you are not going to see the sun, but you are going to be in the darkness. and which is very much conducive for any astronomical observations. There have been other lagrange points also which may be very useful to study when you are going to see a vision of both Sun and the Earth together simultaneously. And this will need different kinds of mission designs. Suppose you have missions for out of the ecliptic plane, you know the concept of the ecliptic plane when you have Sun, you have Earth. and if you consider the orbit of the earth around the sun and if you are considering the plane on which the earth is having a revolution around the sun, this plane is called the ecliptic plane. Now all the other planets are all almost on the same plane with some deviations but if you see from a distance it will appear as an ecliptic disc. But if you want to study say the polar regions of the sun which have got lots of things to do in terms of the eruptions of the Sun, the dynamics which is happening in the solar plasma, you might have to envisage a mission which will have to go out of the ecliptic plane and that will have its own challenges. So mission design and control, advanced propulsion system, formation flight mechanism may be needed in certain cases wherein you are going to study some other phenomena, especially if you have to study a big interferometry kind of experiments where you need to have Typically, three satellites or more satellites moving with a precise formation like the birds flying. If you look at the sky, sometimes you see birds are flying in folks and they have a perfect formation flying. Sometimes you need to have to do the same with the satellites. And this will also boil down to the development of certain special technologies. There will be special requirements of thermal power, special kinds of sensors, and also automation. has to be done when you are not going to rely on sending some commands right from the ground for these specialized missions. Talking about the future, many of you are aware that Government of India has approved the two space science missions. One is the Chandrayaan-4 mission which is basically a sample return mission going to the moon and bringing some samples back and which is a precursor mission for human landing. to the moon as safe return along with the lunar sample and this 10-day and 4 is planned for the time regime of 2027 to 2028 and also the venus orbital emission for the comprehensive study of the venus system science studying the venus ionosphere plasma waves surface subsurface lacking on the venus dust in the launch window around 2028 and honorable Prime Minister of the country has shown the vision to us that we should have our own space station. Like the International Space Station, we should have the Bharatiya's Antarikshya Station by year 2035. And in this Bharatiya Antarikshya Station, we should have Bharatiya Gagan Yatris. Gagan Yatris means astronauts, Indian astronauts stationed there. doing some science or applications from the Bharatiya and Diksha station. And by year 2040, we should have Indian Gaganjathris landing on the moon and returning safely to the earth with Indian technology and Indian launch vehicle. And if you have to do all these things, you should have very high capacity launch vehicles, next generation or new generation launch vehicles. You should have capability of space docking. You should have mastered the reentry technology. You should have mastered the human rating wherein you are confident to send a human being into the space and bring him or her back safely to the Earth. You should also have mastered the reusable space vehicle technology and different other propulsion systems like air breathing propulsion system wherein you are going to use the atmospheric oxygen as your oxidizer component of your propulsion system and you can save a lot of your mass. So, all that I wanted to tell you is, the future is, for the future you have to have some condition set that by 2047 when India marks 100 years of its freedom, we should attain certain things. We should have our space station, we should have Indian astronauts landed on the moon, we should have capabilities of doing so and so things. That is what we should do today. For that we should have demonstrated certain technologies in big scales. certain capabilities and that's why our human space flight program, Gaganjan program is taking shape and that's why many other systems like Indian communication, delay satellite systems are also happening to make it, to make us safe to land, to have a constant 24 by 7 communication when we have some Indians in the outer space. And what we should do in these coming years. That's why we have spoken about the past and many problems which we have faced in the past, how did we solve, has given us insight to solve. some of the problems which we may face in the future. And coming to the present state of the, you know, how we are connected, it is very important to get connected because as a space agency, ISRO is not moving alone, ISRO is moving as a country, India. And in India, when you have to do space science, it is all about doing not only the observation of the space, but also a substantial amount of modeling and simulation. When I say modeling, it is physics-based modeling going to the basics of the past principles doing and also another area is emerging artificial intelligence and machine learning best modeling which is basically a big data analytics that is also another kind of modeling. And this modeling is very closely linked with simulation and simulation is also having two broad branches like computer simulation and laboratory simulation. the computer simulation you can run physics based models or even AI ML models but in the laboratory simulation what you do you basically create a kind of environment maybe in a vacuum chamber create some kinds of you know facets of the space like you can simulate the solar radiation you must simulate certain solar wind particles which is coming from sun and study what is happening this will cohort you can simulate a kind of condition of the early art system and try to understand how did life form, past life has come by doing certain laboratory experiments. Those are all laboratory simulations and all these modeling and simulations are aided by observations. Observation could be ground based, observation could be space based. I have spoken about space based and ground based observation. There is another kind of observation where in even sample analysis. When I spoke about Chenryan 4, I spoke about the plan to bring some lunar samples back. You are also aware of the Apollo program or the lunar program, the Chang'e program wherein samples have been brought back from the different parts of the moon and analyzed. But there is another way of sample analysis where samples themselves come to you like meteorite samples. And in India many of you are aware the physical research laboratory has got a very good, very strong program in analyzing this. and bringing out fantastic science out of it. I wanted you to know all about this because many of you are good at physics, good at chemistry, some of you are good at doing biology, you are good at doing number crunching, AI, ML models. I must tell you space is such a domain wherein nothing is unutilized. Even a biologist. a computer scientist even if you are good at writing that also helps when you are going to communicate science in a way everybody will be able to understand and this is but this is a document which i have shown here space research in india if you go to any search engine and give the documents name you are going to get a pdf file around 400 pages which will tell about the current state of affairs in space research in india part of the institutions that are working in what area in the space research. It is a culmination of last two years of space science research which have happened in the country. It is important to see this thing and understand this because many of the students are of the opinion or they are not aware of what are the kinds of scopes available in the country for doing this, for doing space science. For them, I must tell you, there have been lots of very beautiful, very... respected institutions in the country and you must know what are the things happening and what are the domains how not everybody has to send a satellite or a rocket there are opportunities in other ways also do search the net find out this document study and see what is what are happening in the country and also there have been other fascinating domains and uh why collaboration is important you know not only we are going to see study the space with electromagnetic waves. There have been other messengers also which carry information from space like you know electric and magnetic fields also come. neutrinos, cosmic rays, even gravitational waves, they carry lots of information. You know, when some energetic processes are happening in space and which disturbs the space-time continuum itself and this perturbation of the space-time continuum propagates and that's what we call a gravitational wave and this cosmic ray and other particles. they can create lots of other secondary particles, neutrinos. They can pass anything. When I'm talking to you, several neutrinos are piercing me. I am not able to understand also. But the neutrinos, they can give rise to some kinds of secondary particles or even shering of radiations which can be detected as some secondary processes. All that I wanted to tell you is, it is not only the electromagnetic radiations of photons we are studying, we are studying the other. messengers also and since we are studying the other messengers also if you're studying some other domain you also can contribute to the space observation and collaborations are important because in a country like India and also why India abroad there are experts who are working in all these fields and all of them are working together to understand what is happening also many of you are aware in the even the large hadron collider let's see how you are creating a very high energetic situation to understand how to go to the realm of very short-lived particles which is going to take you to the very beginning of the universe when everything has started. So every domain has got something or the other to do when you are speaking about the space and that's how it is very much important to grow as a nation. Presently how we are growing as a nation See, we are having a few programs for the data utilization and the capacity. For the missions which we have already flown, we have some funding mechanism for analyzing our data to come up with some proposals. It is a proposal-based, merit-based. We are already having some programs running for Channel A and 2 and AstroSat, wherein we have funded a few organizations to do kind of scientific research, specific focused scientific research. and very soon we are going to come up with some opportunity for Chandrayaan-3 and Ajith Yalwan. You know Chandrayaan-3 data also have been released last year during the National Space Day, 23rd of August and also we are having support cells for AstroSat in Ayuka and for Anithi Yalwan it is in the Aries and an institute in Manital, Ayuka is in Pune and you can search the net if you are not aware what do these support cells do. and if you are not aware, I can tell you will be amazed and you will be able to identify a lot of ways to connect with this whole process which is running. And this growing as a nation has got another aspect like scientific way of development. Already you know that in two of our important missions like Aditya L1, Indian Institute of Astrophysics has delivered the VLC instrument which is studying the Sothar Kaulona. The IUCHA has developed the suit instrument which is studying the sun in the ultraviolet. The POLIX instrument in ExpoSat has been developed by the Raman Research Institute. So there have been opportunities and growing opportunity for the other institutions to contribute for the scientific periods also. And also there have been a lot of memorandum of understanding science with different institutions for specific scientific domains which is also happening and There have been also a very good connection with the scientific community of the country who are the think tanks to tell what we should do in the coming decades or the coming two decades, how to formulate the roadmap of science exploration in the country. Already a few meetings have happened and we are in a better condition now to understand what we should do in future. And specific discussions also have been initiated for future mega science missions. So mega science missions are big budget missions with lot of stakeholders, maybe international stakeholders also. A few institutions have been identified in the country and they have been enabled to cluster different scientific expertise to have discussions and find out what are the things to be done if we have to do certain scientific exploration maybe 10 years, 20 years, 30 years down the line from now. And in these, the students have got tremendous roles to play because of the obvious reasons. If you see 2030-40 time frame, who will be playing very important roles? The students whose age group is around 20 years. plus minus say five years. So Astronomy Olympiad is partially funded by us. We are also giving problem statements to IIT Tech Pace and also the National Space Science Symposium which is a very important platform which is organized once in two years and now what you know in the from the last one which happened in 2024 we have dedicated started dedicating one session for the undergraduate and the postgraduate students. which is a platform for exchanging ideas, establishing mentorship between the students at the S2S parts and specialized workshops for the students are arranged and also the S2 Start program which I have don't have to do much of introduction and that is the context of the Start program wherein after having said all these things whatever has to be done in future and for meeting this goal what we should do today Start program the lecture of the Start program will have lots of inputs to give you. And let me tell you that we need you in the journey to aim at understanding and exploration of the solar system and beyond, pursuing exploration of the extraterrestrial life and even extraterrestrial intelligence later and activities for sustainability of life beyond the earth to certain extent we have already done it when you remember the oil experiment very. Recently, the PSLP's last stage has demonstrated how the crop has been grown in the outer space. This is a small beginning. How will we do it? By defining and conducting space observations and integrating the ground observations, which are equally important, and developing technologies and capabilities in the nation, engaging in national and international collaborations. what for to be able to gain scientific knowledge on the solar system and beyond, predict the future of future state of the earth and other planets of the sun and expand the human presence to the outer other planets as an alternative award for the sustenance of the human race. So with these I thank all of you for joining and I end my presentation. I maybe I will be happy to take up new questions. Thank you very much for joining.

and you are seeing this gentleman who is John Evershed working with the spectroheliograph at the Kodaikanal Observatory and these two institutions if you trace down their history you will be able to relate the history of today what we know as the Indian Institute for Astrophysics IAA which is located in Agalur and also you can see in the right hand side a picture of the Colaba magnetic observatory which has been since 1826. It started for the meteorological observation station at the Colaba, a place in Mumbai, and the magnetic observations were carried from 1842 onwards. As you can see here, a box in the red color, the building which you can see here, a hut, this was the place where the magnetic observations is to happen. So during this time, from 1700 something to 1800 something, the domains which we used to cover included the study of the planets, the moons.

the stars, sun and Earth's magnetic field and we have to remember we were before the space era and we had to depend on certain instruments and telescopes which were deployed on the ground and we are getting the information from space by virtue of the photons which were coming or some signatures in the magnetic field of the Earth and some other agents which were carrying information from space to the Earth. Now you have to see the space science domains which predominated during 1900 to 1930. Planets, moon, stars, there have been studies from the cosmic rays, sun and Earth's magnetic field and there there was a time when radio waves were in the vogue and people used to know how to generate and harness radio waves and we have to remember the importance of the different world wars which happened which made use of the radio waves for the strategic purposes. And there was an observation of the deflection of radio waves in the atmosphere.

And that was the time people were not knowing about something called ionosphere was existing. And the deflection of the radio waves from the atmosphere gave rise to a brand new branch of science, which is known as ionosphere. And during 1920s to 1930s, there have been... significant work in the domain of ionosphere and I must remember the contributions of Professor Shishir Kumar Mitra who was the disciple of Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose who is remembered as the first use of radio waves in India to probe the ionosphere and this can be treated as the remote sensing of the ionosphere through bottom sounding and his seminal works are still still available if you are some of you are interested to know his contributions you can definitely go through his papers and you will be able to see that in 1920s, 30s and beyond during these decades how much important work he did for the study of the Earth's ionosphere that too by using radio waves as a remote sensing agent.

In 1947 India was independent from the British rule and something interesting and something inspiring was happening so if you delve into the history of the country's space program you will be able to see even in 1940s the pre-independence there were two brilliant and valiant songs of mother India. One was Dr. Homi Jahangir-Bhabha, who understood the importance of building a outstanding schools of research, such as some other countries are fortunate to possess. And the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research was founded in 1945. And Dr. Vikram A. Sarabhai emphasized on the need of becoming second to none in the application of the advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society. and Physical Research Laboratory was founded in the year 1947. And during the period 1940s to 1950s, that is both during pre-independence and to a certain extent post-independence, there have been lots of experiments using scientific balloons. And today the National Balloon Facility still sends lots of scientific balloons which go up to the altitude of 30 to 40 kilometers with scientific instruments.

And in the picture you are able to see Dr. Bhavik Jahangir Bhabha with some balloon board experiments from PIA for Hyderabad. And during 1940s to 50s, cosmic ray studies is to predominate using scientific balloons. And during 1956, it marks the establishment of the ionospheric field station under the University of Calcutta at Haringhata, about 50 kilometers north-east of Calcutta.

And if you see the geographic code coordinates. It is about 22 degrees north and 88 degrees east. And you would imagine that there is an offset between the geographical coordinates and the magnetic coordinates. And this Horinghata is very much important because if you see the physics of the ionosphere and you will be able to come across some term called equatorial ionization anomaly.

So what happens in the equatorial ionization anomaly, you see some enhancement of a total electron content in the north side and the south side of the magnetic equator. It peaks around 15 degrees north and 15 degrees south of the magnetic equator and if you have such an atmospheric field station, it will be able to study so many parameters of this kind of phenomena which happens because of lots of interesting phenomena which are basically interplays between the generation and annihilation of ionosphere because of the solar forcing. and also the influence of the Earth's magnetic field and also the influence of the Sun's magnetic field. So, Professor Shishir Kumar Mitra has to be fondly remembered for the establishment of this.

And in 1960s, the Tumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station was founded and the place is of scientific importance as many of you are aware. The Tumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station is right under the magnetic equator and also beside that in the sea coast which is very conducive for sending scientific rockets to access the upper atmosphere and the atmosphere and being at the sea coast it is all the more conducive to have a launch pad there and dr vikram sarabhai founded the sounding rocket experiments at tals and if you have to correlate with whatever i have told a few minutes back and that use of radio waves to study the ionosphere was nothing but a remote sensing study of the ionosphere, whereas if you are sending a sounding rocket to study the ionosphere, it is an in-situ study of the ionosphere. So this is how the program evolved and in 1960s the vision and importance of the space program was apprised to the leaders who used to matter on those days and the early steps were taken by sending different sounding rockets from some other countries and the first rocket launching station was established as Tumba and the inaugural launch of the sounding rocket happened with the scientific payload in the year 1963. In this picture you are able to see a few stallovers who have shaped the Indian space program and you can see how a nose cone of a sounding rocket is to be carried to the launch pad on bicycle and on 29th of November, as I mentioned, in the year 1963, the NICAPASHA rocket took off from Tumba.

The manufacturer was Aerolab, a company in the United States later, which was converted to Atlantic Research. And then something happens. Somebody else launches rocket from your launchpad and this provides a very good opportunity for the development of indigenous sounding rocket program. and India's own sounding rocket RH-75.

RH stands for Rohini and Rohini is nothing but the Rohini constellation. It came into being very soon and you can see in the picture Professor Vikram Sarawai with Y.J. Rao examining a Rohini 75 rocket here.

And a very important event happened in 1968 on 2nd of February where this launch pad, Tumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station was dedicated to the United Nations and this is the landmark in the history of the space program. not only because of the reason that it is opened up to the global scientific community to perform research on the ionosphere and the upper atmosphere but also it is not about sending simple rockets because when you have to send the rockets, a rocket you have to have a peripheral system like tracking system, radar, telemetry, telecommand, everything the peripheral systems were set up gradually. It was conducive to set up that kind of a an ecosystem to have a full-fledged sounding rocket launch station once it was opened up to the United Nations and that was a very strategic step.

You are not only growing your own country but you are growing as a mankind and in this process you are helping your own space program to grow. You have to remember in 1968 India was only a 21 year old newborn independent nation and in a new independent nation, there have been all kinds of problems, what you can think of. Problem of governance, problem of health, problem of education, everything.

And here, seeing the dream of a space enabled nation and seeing the dream was not enough, it was also a collective effort of the masterminds during those days, how to open up and how to make use of the expertise which were lying elsewhere to build up TALS. as an international facility. And during 1975 to 1976, we grew with the international cooperation. Dr. Sarabhai's dialogue with NASA led to the satellite instructional television experiment to explore using satellites for education.

You will remember that in India, the television started sometime around 1970s, and there have been demonstrations. I have heard from my seniors that there have been demonstrations where... There have been live performances of some music and there have been television skips somewhere and communication was happening using satellites. And people were amazed how can this happen because in those days, television transmission was not a very common thing in the country. And this was very much required to show to our leadership that if we have our own satellite program, what all good can happen.

in a country like India which has a very good extension in latitude and longitude how satellite technology can help to educate the people in different facets of life. So for that this site experiment had a tremendous impact and also there have been an experiment with the advanced technology satellite again another satellite from the US which was used for the aerospace studies and the space physics division in the Vikram Sarabhai space center took a lead. And the Space Physics Division now in the 1980s, it has been transformed to a full-fledged laboratory, which is the pride of the nation today, which is known as the Space Physics Laboratory jewel in the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center.

So a point to be noted here is our Indian space program has started not from the activities of defense. It has started from two motivations. The first motivation was from science. and the second motivation was societal applications and this site experiment and the aerospace studies with ATS stand testimony to these two motivations which have nucleated the entire space program. If you see what happened during 1960s to 1980s, there have been lots of balloon-borne experiments led by Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Physical Discovery.

and hard X-ray astronomy. When I say hard X-ray, it was something around greater than 20 KV X-rays. They were studied using scientific balloons. And there also have been experiments with sounding rockets.

And again, the lead was taken by PRL and PIFR for X-ray experiments, 1 to 10 KV sources from Thumba and Shiharikota. And also, the Space Physics Division has taken a lot of initiative for atmospheric experiments and also experiments related to the upper atmosphere. Also, the Physical Research Laboratory has taken these as platforms to study the activity of the sun and its influence on the cosmic rays physics.

So these two decades, 1960s to 1980s, went on with lots of experiments on Venus and sounding rockets. And here something very inspiring happened. What happened was, if you have to study anything, you have to build instruments.

And when you have to build instruments, you have to remember these instruments are not something which has to work on the earth. It is not a commercial product. It is a product which has to work in space. When you are sending a hardware to a balloon which goes to an altitude of 30 to 40 kilometers, it has got its own challenges. When you are sending an instrument through a sounding rocket and it is going to a few hundreds of kilometers above the wind sea level, it has got a few more set of challenges.

And these challenges of making scientific instruments for the Belur platform and the Saudi local platform were very effective to go to the next step. And the next step was to make our own satellites Aryabhatta in 1979, which took off from a Soviet launch facility. And the training which the Indian scientists have received to make instruments for balloons and the sounding of the platforms have been proven handy when they started making instruments or scientific payloads for satellites.

And this was completely designed and fabricated in India and launched by a Soviet Cosmos rocket in 1975 on April 19th. And you have to see what was happening apparently in the launch vehicle program of our country. So far we have had sounding rockets and I have told you how did we start our Rohini sounding rocket program from Rohini 75. 75 means you know the diameter in millimeter of the first stage of the sounding rocket sounding rocket has got two stages uh booster and the sustainer the 75 tells about the diameter of the booster and then the need was felt to have our own satellite launch vehicle because both balloon platform and the sounding rocket platforms have got their own limitations.

The balloon could give you an altitude of 30 to 35 kilometers. On the other hand, the sounding rockets were giving you an altitude of a few hundreds of kilometers. But you have to remember, the sounding rockets were providing access to a bigger altitude but for a very limited time. It is to go and fall and that time available for any scientific instrument was very limited. In balloon, you could have a prolonged exposure to space but not beyond an altitude of 30 to 40 kilometers.

So this necessitated some platform which we will call a satellite and we should stay in space for a prolonged duration and perform scientific experiments and because of this we took the help of soviet to launch our Aryabhatta the first satellites. Why don't we have our own launch vehicle program? And that's how we had our SLV-3 which came up in the timeline of 1970, 1980 and which was capable of placing a 40 kg of scientific satellite to a lower orbit. So when it's a lower orbit it has a certain number, it is around typically some 400 to 500 kilometers from the mean sea level.

And the Rohini series of satellites were launched. using SLV3, Rohini Technology Payload RTP, which is basically a camera which was used to monitor the launch vehicle stages, but it could not be tested in the orbit. Then we had Rohini RS1, RSD1, D, you have to remember D stands for development. Then we had Rohini RSD2.

These are all cameras, but you have to remember very silently something if a revolution was happening in Rohini RSD2. we were sending a visible and then inferred imaging. We are appreciating the importance of going beyond the visible wavelength and today any scientist appreciates the possibility or the potential of using the other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum especially to do something which we cannot do with the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Today when you monitor the earth or the vegetation on the earth or something which is very much prominent in infrared, you send an infrared camera.

And this is very suddenly how did we start in the domain of exploring the other part of the electromagnetic spectrum. And then you see 1981, we have had India's first geostationary satellite, APPLE. APPLE stands for Alien Passenger Pierrot Experiment, which is 670 kg. So there was a big jump and it was launched into GTO, the Geo Transfer Orbit, by the third development of ESA's alien vehicle.

We have to remember that 670 kg was a big number to us in 1981. So far we had only SLB-3 which was capable of launching up to 40 kilometers to lower growth orbits. But when we are speaking about 670 kgs we had to go to some other agencies and that's why we had to send it using an alien vehicle and which was boosted into geosynchronous orbit geo by apogee motor pairing of ISRO and it was derived from the fourth stage motor of SLB-3. Lesson 2 we learned is like this.

SLV-3's, the four-stage motor was now used in the satellite, Apple, to have a transition from the geotransfer orbit to the geosynchronous orbit. That is how the knowledge gained in one domain is being used in the other domain. So everywhere some lesson is there to be learned and maybe these lessons what we have learned in our past and that's why precisely I'm speaking about the past.

which can have answer to some of the problems which we're facing in present and which we're going to face as key indicators for future and valuable hands-on experience in designing and development of three-axis stabilized geostationary communication satellites were established and orbit raising maneuvers station keeping all these things we have at past and when we were having the operations of the Apple payload, Apple satellites. Then between 1987 to 1994, we were having gamma ray astronomy experiments and upper atmospheric studies through the stretched Rohini series or SOS satellites. The previous one was Rohini and since we are continuing it, we are calling it a stretched Rohini series. And we were having quite a few satellites, SOS A and SOS B. SWAS-C, SWAS-C2, and you also have to pay attention to what was happening to our launch vehicles in parallel. So from the satellite launch vehicle we have developed the ASLV or the augmented satellite launch vehicle which was capable of launching or placing a 150 kg class of satellite to the lower orbit and a few new technologies were demonstrated here like strap-on technology.

What are the strap-ons? You see in the picture there are two smaller rockets. on the either sides of a core rocket and these smaller rockets are called strap-ons and they offer you a more lift-off thrust where you have a higher payload to launch and there were many other augmentations like inertial navigation, closed loop guidance, so on and so forth and this itself is a topic by itself and let's not delve into this thing let's move forward with what was happening in the realm of science. And so in the early days of space program and when the Rohini, the stretched Rohini series of satellites were very successful in studying the Gamma ray experiments, and there were a few thought processes which were haunting our astronomers.

The thought process was like this. This Gamma ray bus were basically some energetic process which could happen in anywhere in the sky. Some energy process giving rise to some photons.

and which is falling in the regime of the gamma rays in the electromagnetic spectrum, you never know where this is going to happen. It could happen here, it could happen here, it could happen somewhere else. So for that to be captured, what you need, you need a wide angle system wherein you can capture these events wherever it happens.

But the community of the astronomers, they said no, we need something extra. We need to have the technology to study. some specific stars, not something a wide angle, whatever comes from whatever directions we're happy with it.

So we need to study specific targets in the sky, like X-ray astronomy to study X-ray binaries, and for which we need very precise pointing, which is possible through a technology called inertial pointing, and need more mass and power, because if we have some system which will offer you a very precise pointing. it will have its own control system, it will have its own electronics, and this will definitely have its own mass and power. And they have lots of developments. and there have been inertial systems for attitude control and star sensors for reference.

What are the star sensors? Basically you're having specialized cameras which can look at some part of the sky and when you see the patterns of certain stars you understand from the effeminates of those constellations that you are looking into. So this is a way of understanding which is inspired by the early navigators who used to sail in the sea looking at the sky. detect their navigation. So star sensors are spinons taken from history and associated control systems.

Now we are having ASLV, Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle, and this was not enough because we need more mass. Then our launch vehicle program also had progressed and by the time we had PSLV, the Porous Satellite Launch Vehicle, which was capable of launching 1750 kg of satellite to one SSO. What is SSO?

SSO stands for the Sun Synchronous Orbit. Sun Synchronous Orbit is an orbit such that if you are having a satellite in a Sun Synchronous Orbit which is almost polar, not exactly polar, it is almost polar with some limited inclination which offers you the same local time when you are passing on a given location. If you are having a Sun Synchronous Orbit over India and it is designed in such a way that it will pass over India only at 12 o'clock noon, it will continue to do so. That's why it's called a Sun-Sequoia Orbit.

And on the Sun-Sequoia Orbit, in the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, you had one scientific experiment which is called Indian X-ray Astronomy Experiment, IXAE, which was on board the IRS P3 in 1996. And you have to remember that this was not a dedicated science satellite. This satellite was planned for some other purpose, but this IH-AE was a co-passenger in that whole satellite which has done lots of very good experiments on bright X-ray binary star systems including X-ray pulsars and stellar mass black hole candidates. And this has given, even a lot of PhDs in astronomy.

And I should say this is one of the very matured space-based astronomy which was done in our country in the previous century, 1996. And you have to see what was happening in the world, the global scenario. During that time, the Hubble Space Telescope was already operational and the Crompton Gamma-ray Observatory was also operational. Both were from NASA.

And getting ready were the Chandra X-ray mission from NASA and the X-ray of Newton. from ESA, European Space Agency. And we have flown the IXAE experiment when we were planning for the next.

And doing something is not to be done for the sake of doing something. The Indian scientific community was very keen to understand or to plan how to contribute resourcefully to the global endeavor. Something has to be done in the scenario when Hubble Space Telescope is already there. CGRO is already there and two other observatories are getting ready. So they have a lot of deliberations on how to do some cutting edge thing.

One solution was to have more sensitivity, more resolution, but you have to remember more sensitivity, more resolution. This requires a lot of other technological advances and maybe that time we were not ready with those things. So one very important idea was why don't we go for multi-wavelength astronomy.

Those who have understood physics, you will understand that every part of the electromagnetic spectrum has got some story or the other to tell. When you are observing a source, maybe a star or anybody or any blackbody radiation source and it was carrying through the electromagnetic radiation in different small small boxes, every part of the spectrum has got something to tell. And just imagine if you can place a satellite which has got a suit of instruments. Each instrument is catering to different part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Won't it be an ingenious approach to this?

And precisely that's how the astrocyte was born with capabilities of near and far ultraviolet, soft and hard extra bands. That's how we have come to the today's space science program. So when I speak about AstroSat, it was launched in 2015 and it still continues, which has already got many credits of science.

If I have to speak about AstroSat, it is such a topic, it cannot be completed in one lecture. AstroSat is still active and it is still producing a lot of very inspiring and interesting scientific results and lots of PhDs. Now, I have to mention about a very important facet of the Indian space program and I have to go back a few years in time.

While Astroseq was launched in 2015, let me take you back in the year 2003 and 2004 and that was the time when our planetary exploration began. In August 15, 2003, the then Honourable Prime Minister of India announced the Chandrayaan-1 mission. And in November 2004, in Udaipur, in a conference, Honourable President of India said, it is not enough to simply go to the moon.

Why don't we have something that would impact on the moon, touch the moon, and we'll do some science. And that's how the idea of the Moon Impact Probe was mooted. And not only the idea was mooted, it was... materialized and the moon impact probe happens to be the first human-made object from Asia to have touched the moon and this is the first ever successful observation of the daytime lunar exosphere. When I say lunar exosphere, exosphere is a term where the atmosphere becomes so dilute, so sparse that you can very well say practically there is no atmosphere.

above a few hundreds of kilometers but that condition starts in moon right from the surface and this was an incident and this impactor was made to impact almost at the lunar pole. You can see here in this picture whatever moon impact probe was made to impact and you can see the same picture how Chandrayaan-3 soft landed. Maybe I will tell you about the Chandrayaan-3 after a few minutes. So this moon impact probe was very successful.

in studying the lunar exospheric noble gases like argon, neon, helium and also molecular hydrogen. And this experiment has given the first detection of the lunar exospheric water vapor H2O. And let me speak about the Chenryan series of experiments because our lunar program is a bit streamlined. Chenryan-1 mission was launched in 2008, Chenryan-2 in 2019 and Chenryan-3 in 2023. If you see the first two missions, there have been the orbiter based missions, although we planned the lander and the rover in Chandrayaan-2, we didn't succeed because of some technological leashes. But Chandrayaan-1 and Chandrayaan-2 have given a very good opportunity to study the moon from the orbiter.

And you understand when you study some celestial body from the orbiter or a satellite, it gives an opportunity to study that body as a whole. global sense. On the other hand, when it came to Chandrayaan-3, it was a lander and this, because it was a lander and the rover, this provided the ground truth of the moon at the landing site.

So these two were a bit complementary set of experiments and speaking about Chandrayaan-3, this experiment was having three modules, the lander, which was named Vikram. Vikram was having instruments to study the ground vibrations of the moon and seismicity and near surface plasma environment. Also the thermophysical properties of the lunar regolith. There was a rover, the name of the rover was Pragan. Pragan is a Sanskrit name which means wisdom and Pragan had two scientific instruments, alpha particle spectrometer and laser induced spectrometer which was studying the elemental composition of the regolith.

And there was a propulsion module which carried the lander and the rover composite to the Moon's orbit. And the propulsion module was containing an instrument called SHAPE which was nothing but a spectro-polarimeter which was observing the Earth from the Moon's orbit, Earth as an exoplanet. So this is something interesting because when we have an exoplanet program, exoplanet means some planet which is not in our solar system, some other solar system. And if you are sending a space mission, perhaps you will be looking for certain signatures.

And especially, signatures of certain, you know, certain facets which tell about whether this particular exoplanet is having a potential to host life or Earth-like exoplanets. So that can be facilitated if you study your own Earth as an exoplanet from some other platform. So SHAPE was serving that purpose.

Because of the paucity of time, I may not be having enough opportunity to tell about the scientific outcome of each and every mission. So, this particular slide summarizes the measured outcome from each of the science missions. Chen Lei and Guan had a remarkable discovery about the lunar water, both in the form of lunar water ice on the surface, subsurface and exosphere, but also the interaction of the solar wind with the lunar regolith, discovery of different lava tubes, different kinds of populations of ions in the wake region of the moon and also Cherian 2 had very important discovery class of findings in terms of an ambiguous detection of water rise in the moon surface. First ever global study of the exospheric lunar argon 40. Lunar argon 40 speaks about the radioactivity within the moon because argon 40 comes from radioactive potassium 40. Because of the radioactive decay, potassium 40 becomes argon 40. And synthetic aperture data based on the surface sub-surface features, hydration. Hydration means something to tell about the underground water ice of the moon and global elemental maps like aluminum, sodium, silicon, magnesium, chromium and also some studies of the sun from the Chandrayaan-2 platform and many more.

I can go on telling and it is going to be an exciting journey but today I'm not going to be stuck up by telling about Chandrayaan-2 alone. Mars orbit animation is yet another inspiring journey which has gifted the first ever study of the winning side exosphere of Mars. First detection of the suprathermal argon-40 in Martian exosphere.

This is very important because suprathermal means somehow we understood that certain argon-40 atom were having a very, you know, actually high energy. It has picked up from some sources and if some atoms and molecules in and the atmosphere of a planet picks up some very high energy. Does it not indicate that it has got a potential to escape the planet?

So scientists say that ancient Mars had a thicker atmosphere, it had liquid water but today due to many reasons, many astronomical reasons, Mars has lost most of its atmosphere. Maybe this kind of experiment whatever we did with argon-40, super thermal argon-40 has given very good clues to understand what actually happened during the process which span over a few million years or billion years of time when Mars lost its atmosphere. There also have been studies on the dust storm activities on Mars, characterization of the polarized scales, Martian albedo studies, Martian geology studies and I must tell you this list is not exhaustive.

I would like to emphasize here, this is only a very minimal thing which I can afford to tell you in a very minimal time to make you aware of how India has contributed to the global space arena in the realm of space exploration. After having told this fact that India has contributed significantly and which indicates that the globe has got lots of expectation from a country like India and that's how the future of the space exploration is the thing which we are going to emphasize in this journal. In the realm of astronomy and solar exploration, apart from AstroSat, you will remember that in 2024, we have sent ExpoSat, India's first X-ray polarimetry observatory, which is second in the world, which is going to give more insight into astrophysical processes of black holes, X-ray pulsars and neutron stars and other luminous extra sources.

and this is capable of studying the polarization of light which is coming from some astronomical source and studying the polarization of the light from any source gives you some extra insight which is not going to be the case when you are simply studying the variation of the intensity or varying the spectrum of the radiation which is coming from a source. Studying polarization of a light gives you some insight about the magnetic field topology of the source or the medium through which it is coming because when photon passes through some magnetic field it undergoes some changes in the plane of polarization and in the degree of polarization also. Also speaking about the Aditya L1, the India's first dedicated solar observatory with a set of seven instruments.

First time it is from the country. An observatory is placed in the first sun at L1 point of the India of the country. L1 points with the first Lagrangian point.

You will know that between any two bodies, any two celestial points there are five points where there are equilibrium points of gravity, not only because of the gravity, because of the centrifugal force, there have been five points around the two-body system. And without discussing about the other four points, if I tell about what happens in the first Lagrangian point, it is very easy to understand because the gravitational forces between two bodies get nullified there. So Sun-Earth 11 point is a point where the gravitational force of Sun and the gravitational force of the Earth they cancel each other and it is located around 1.5 million kilometers away from the Earth and you know that the Sun-Earth distance is around 150 million kilometers. It is a very good observatory to study the Sun, the radiation particles of the fields which are coming from Sun. and also understand the triggers of the space weather and which also studied the solar storm, a very strong solar storm which happened in the month of May.

Many of you are aware in this last year 2024 and you are also aware on the 6th of January this year, it marked the first anniversary of the insertion of the Aritel-1 spacecraft to the helio orbit around the first Lagrangian point. and the data have been released, the past set of data have been released and I take this opportunity to reach to all of you to tell do look into the data of the IETL one and teachers to encourage the students to have a look at the data and define some projects, some postgraduate level or even undergraduate level simple projects which you can think you can do using this sets of data which are available in our data center. So to speak about today what we have, all our exploration today are divided into four particles.

The first particle is about astronomy, astrophysics and exoplanets. Another particle is about heliophysics and space weather. Another particle is the solar system exploration where you studying the planets, the natural satellites or the asteroids or the small solar system bodies. And yet another set of vertical, another vertical is the near earth.

space and the domain of aeronautics where you study the physics and chemistry of the upper atmosphere, the ionosphere, thermosphere, bangladesh sphere region and when you say near up space it doesn't have any clear-cut definition what we call a near up space. The near up space is a space where you are having upper atmosphere, you are having the ionosphere, even people say the space between the earth and the moon and even the earth and the sun, they're also near up space. very very if any asteroid comes we start worrying if the space weather is very harsh in the near earth space we start worrying that is the space which have got direct influence on our well-being on the earth in terms of both science and also in terms of the space assets and this slide summarizes our journey so far whatever i have spoken about starting from the balloon bone experiment sounding rocket and isobus founded in 1969 and what all the scientific experiments we did, all are summarized in this slide where we stand right now. Coming to the end of my lecture, telling about the way forward, we have to plan for lots of other sophisticated kinds of space missions. We have lots of ground-based observatories and telescopes which are doing fantastic job.

Even we will be very happy to know that our Ground-based telescopes have done fantastic work in studying the Sun and also discovery of certain exoplanets. But as you are aware, ground-based systems have got certain limitations and that's why we have to go beyond the Earth's orbit, beyond the ground-based system, go to Earth's orbit. And sometimes Earth orbit is not enough, we have to go to certain very specialized areas like we have mentioned about the past SANA, the Lagrangian point. Similarly, we may have to go to the second. Lagrange point which happens to be behind the Earth.

And if you are in the second Lagrange point, you are not going to see the sun, but you are going to be in the darkness. and which is very much conducive for any astronomical observations. There have been other lagrange points also which may be very useful to study when you are going to see a vision of both Sun and the Earth together simultaneously. And this will need different kinds of mission designs.

Suppose you have missions for out of the ecliptic plane, you know the concept of the ecliptic plane when you have Sun, you have Earth. and if you consider the orbit of the earth around the sun and if you are considering the plane on which the earth is having a revolution around the sun, this plane is called the ecliptic plane. Now all the other planets are all almost on the same plane with some deviations but if you see from a distance it will appear as an ecliptic disc. But if you want to study say the polar regions of the sun which have got lots of things to do in terms of the eruptions of the Sun, the dynamics which is happening in the solar plasma, you might have to envisage a mission which will have to go out of the ecliptic plane and that will have its own challenges.

So mission design and control, advanced propulsion system, formation flight mechanism may be needed in certain cases wherein you are going to study some other phenomena, especially if you have to study a big interferometry kind of experiments where you need to have Typically, three satellites or more satellites moving with a precise formation like the birds flying. If you look at the sky, sometimes you see birds are flying in folks and they have a perfect formation flying. Sometimes you need to have to do the same with the satellites. And this will also boil down to the development of certain special technologies. There will be special requirements of thermal power, special kinds of sensors, and also automation.

has to be done when you are not going to rely on sending some commands right from the ground for these specialized missions. Talking about the future, many of you are aware that Government of India has approved the two space science missions. One is the Chandrayaan-4 mission which is basically a sample return mission going to the moon and bringing some samples back and which is a precursor mission for human landing. to the moon as safe return along with the lunar sample and this 10-day and 4 is planned for the time regime of 2027 to 2028 and also the venus orbital emission for the comprehensive study of the venus system science studying the venus ionosphere plasma waves surface subsurface lacking on the venus dust in the launch window around 2028 and honorable Prime Minister of the country has shown the vision to us that we should have our own space station. Like the International Space Station, we should have the Bharatiya's Antarikshya Station by year 2035. And in this Bharatiya Antarikshya Station, we should have Bharatiya Gagan Yatris.

Gagan Yatris means astronauts, Indian astronauts stationed there. doing some science or applications from the Bharatiya and Diksha station. And by year 2040, we should have Indian Gaganjathris landing on the moon and returning safely to the earth with Indian technology and Indian launch vehicle. And if you have to do all these things, you should have very high capacity launch vehicles, next generation or new generation launch vehicles.

You should have capability of space docking. You should have mastered the reentry technology. You should have mastered the human rating wherein you are confident to send a human being into the space and bring him or her back safely to the Earth. You should also have mastered the reusable space vehicle technology and different other propulsion systems like air breathing propulsion system wherein you are going to use the atmospheric oxygen as your oxidizer component of your propulsion system and you can save a lot of your mass. So, all that I wanted to tell you is, the future is, for the future you have to have some condition set that by 2047 when India marks 100 years of its freedom, we should attain certain things.

We should have our space station, we should have Indian astronauts landed on the moon, we should have capabilities of doing so and so things. That is what we should do today. For that we should have demonstrated certain technologies in big scales. certain capabilities and that's why our human space flight program, Gaganjan program is taking shape and that's why many other systems like Indian communication, delay satellite systems are also happening to make it, to make us safe to land, to have a constant 24 by 7 communication when we have some Indians in the outer space.

And what we should do in these coming years. That's why we have spoken about the past and many problems which we have faced in the past, how did we solve, has given us insight to solve. some of the problems which we may face in the future. And coming to the present state of the, you know, how we are connected, it is very important to get connected because as a space agency, ISRO is not moving alone, ISRO is moving as a country, India.

And in India, when you have to do space science, it is all about doing not only the observation of the space, but also a substantial amount of modeling and simulation. When I say modeling, it is physics-based modeling going to the basics of the past principles doing and also another area is emerging artificial intelligence and machine learning best modeling which is basically a big data analytics that is also another kind of modeling. And this modeling is very closely linked with simulation and simulation is also having two broad branches like computer simulation and laboratory simulation.

the computer simulation you can run physics based models or even AI ML models but in the laboratory simulation what you do you basically create a kind of environment maybe in a vacuum chamber create some kinds of you know facets of the space like you can simulate the solar radiation you must simulate certain solar wind particles which is coming from sun and study what is happening this will cohort you can simulate a kind of condition of the early art system and try to understand how did life form, past life has come by doing certain laboratory experiments. Those are all laboratory simulations and all these modeling and simulations are aided by observations. Observation could be ground based, observation could be space based.

I have spoken about space based and ground based observation. There is another kind of observation where in even sample analysis. When I spoke about Chenryan 4, I spoke about the plan to bring some lunar samples back. You are also aware of the Apollo program or the lunar program, the Chang'e program wherein samples have been brought back from the different parts of the moon and analyzed.

But there is another way of sample analysis where samples themselves come to you like meteorite samples. And in India many of you are aware the physical research laboratory has got a very good, very strong program in analyzing this. and bringing out fantastic science out of it. I wanted you to know all about this because many of you are good at physics, good at chemistry, some of you are good at doing biology, you are good at doing number crunching, AI, ML models. I must tell you space is such a domain wherein nothing is unutilized.

Even a biologist. a computer scientist even if you are good at writing that also helps when you are going to communicate science in a way everybody will be able to understand and this is but this is a document which i have shown here space research in india if you go to any search engine and give the documents name you are going to get a pdf file around 400 pages which will tell about the current state of affairs in space research in india part of the institutions that are working in what area in the space research. It is a culmination of last two years of space science research which have happened in the country.

It is important to see this thing and understand this because many of the students are of the opinion or they are not aware of what are the kinds of scopes available in the country for doing this, for doing space science. For them, I must tell you, there have been lots of very beautiful, very... respected institutions in the country and you must know what are the things happening and what are the domains how not everybody has to send a satellite or a rocket there are opportunities in other ways also do search the net find out this document study and see what is what are happening in the country and also there have been other fascinating domains and uh why collaboration is important you know not only we are going to see study the space with electromagnetic waves.

There have been other messengers also which carry information from space like you know electric and magnetic fields also come. neutrinos, cosmic rays, even gravitational waves, they carry lots of information. You know, when some energetic processes are happening in space and which disturbs the space-time continuum itself and this perturbation of the space-time continuum propagates and that's what we call a gravitational wave and this cosmic ray and other particles. they can create lots of other secondary particles, neutrinos. They can pass anything.

When I'm talking to you, several neutrinos are piercing me. I am not able to understand also. But the neutrinos, they can give rise to some kinds of secondary particles or even shering of radiations which can be detected as some secondary processes. All that I wanted to tell you is, it is not only the electromagnetic radiations of photons we are studying, we are studying the other. messengers also and since we are studying the other messengers also if you're studying some other domain you also can contribute to the space observation and collaborations are important because in a country like India and also why India abroad there are experts who are working in all these fields and all of them are working together to understand what is happening also many of you are aware in the even the large hadron collider let's see how you are creating a very high energetic situation to understand how to go to the realm of very short-lived particles which is going to take you to the very beginning of the universe when everything has started.

So every domain has got something or the other to do when you are speaking about the space and that's how it is very much important to grow as a nation. Presently how we are growing as a nation See, we are having a few programs for the data utilization and the capacity. For the missions which we have already flown, we have some funding mechanism for analyzing our data to come up with some proposals. It is a proposal-based, merit-based. We are already having some programs running for Channel A and 2 and AstroSat, wherein we have funded a few organizations to do kind of scientific research, specific focused scientific research.

and very soon we are going to come up with some opportunity for Chandrayaan-3 and Ajith Yalwan. You know Chandrayaan-3 data also have been released last year during the National Space Day, 23rd of August and also we are having support cells for AstroSat in Ayuka and for Anithi Yalwan it is in the Aries and an institute in Manital, Ayuka is in Pune and you can search the net if you are not aware what do these support cells do. and if you are not aware, I can tell you will be amazed and you will be able to identify a lot of ways to connect with this whole process which is running.

And this growing as a nation has got another aspect like scientific way of development. Already you know that in two of our important missions like Aditya L1, Indian Institute of Astrophysics has delivered the VLC instrument which is studying the Sothar Kaulona. The IUCHA has developed the suit instrument which is studying the sun in the ultraviolet. The POLIX instrument in ExpoSat has been developed by the Raman Research Institute. So there have been opportunities and growing opportunity for the other institutions to contribute for the scientific periods also.

And also there have been a lot of memorandum of understanding science with different institutions for specific scientific domains which is also happening and There have been also a very good connection with the scientific community of the country who are the think tanks to tell what we should do in the coming decades or the coming two decades, how to formulate the roadmap of science exploration in the country. Already a few meetings have happened and we are in a better condition now to understand what we should do in future. And specific discussions also have been initiated for future mega science missions.

So mega science missions are big budget missions with lot of stakeholders, maybe international stakeholders also. A few institutions have been identified in the country and they have been enabled to cluster different scientific expertise to have discussions and find out what are the things to be done if we have to do certain scientific exploration maybe 10 years, 20 years, 30 years down the line from now. And in these, the students have got tremendous roles to play because of the obvious reasons. If you see 2030-40 time frame, who will be playing very important roles?

The students whose age group is around 20 years. plus minus say five years. So Astronomy Olympiad is partially funded by us. We are also giving problem statements to IIT Tech Pace and also the National Space Science Symposium which is a very important platform which is organized once in two years and now what you know in the from the last one which happened in 2024 we have dedicated started dedicating one session for the undergraduate and the postgraduate students.

which is a platform for exchanging ideas, establishing mentorship between the students at the S2S parts and specialized workshops for the students are arranged and also the S2 Start program which I have don't have to do much of introduction and that is the context of the Start program wherein after having said all these things whatever has to be done in future and for meeting this goal what we should do today Start program the lecture of the Start program will have lots of inputs to give you. And let me tell you that we need you in the journey to aim at understanding and exploration of the solar system and beyond, pursuing exploration of the extraterrestrial life and even extraterrestrial intelligence later and activities for sustainability of life beyond the earth to certain extent we have already done it when you remember the oil experiment very. Recently, the PSLP's last stage has demonstrated how the crop has been grown in the outer space.

This is a small beginning. How will we do it? By defining and conducting space observations and integrating the ground observations, which are equally important, and developing technologies and capabilities in the nation, engaging in national and international collaborations.

what for to be able to gain scientific knowledge on the solar system and beyond, predict the future of future state of the earth and other planets of the sun and expand the human presence to the outer other planets as an alternative award for the sustenance of the human race. So with these I thank all of you for joining and I end my presentation. I maybe I will be happy to take up new questions.

Thank you very much for joining.

Transcript for:Indian Space Exploration: Past and Future

Transcript for:
Indian Space Exploration: Past and Future