Pakistan is going through multiple challenges in current times on economics, security, and political fronts. On the other hand, there are certain activities in the region that are of utmost important for Pakistan to take notice of and do appropriate measures to curb the possible impact. One noticeable activity is the Indian recent advancements towards space exploration. India has been trying to modernize its space technology with help from Western nations and USSR in the recent and far past and eventually it seems now India has crossed certain thresholds and is now flexing its muscles further into space exploration.
In this regard, I have conducted a twitter (X) Platform space few weeks ago under our (X) thinktank GSGES (Global space for Ge Economics & Strategy) in order to elaborate the importance of Pakistan’s space exploration missions in response to Indian space advances lately. The guest speaker who was a hierarchy from our space agency was able to join via phone and answered the questions on the subject. At the end of the X space, I have issued a position paper that is attached at the end of this article. India has launched one of its major space missions “Chandrayaan”, also known as the Indian Lunar Exploration Programme, an ongoing series of outer space missions by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). The program incorporates a lunar orbiter, impactor, soft lander, and rover spacecraft. This program demonstrates that India is aggressively and ambitiously moving towards one of the space exploration-capable nations regardless of the economic condition of the Indian people and the absence of necessities available to them.
On November 5, 2013, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched its first spacecraft bound for Mars. Indian built Mangalyaan (“Mars craft” in English) to study the Red Planet and test key technologies required for exploring the inner solar system. The Mangalyaan spacecraft successfully entered Mars orbit on September 23, 2014, making ISRO only the fourth space agency in the world to do so. Prior to India, only the United States, the Soviet Union and the European Space Agency (ESA) had successfully explored Mars. Mangalyaan operated for seven and a half years, observing Martian landscapes and studying their composition using its five science instruments.
ISRO originally intended to launch Mangalyaan on their Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket instead of the only roughly half-as-powerful Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). As with most Mars missions, a GSLV rocket could have boosted Mangalyaan out of Earth orbit and onto an interplanetary trajectory to the Red Planet. But the rocket suffered two failures in 2010, just as Mangalyaan was being conceptualized. Fixing the identified issues in the rocket’s design and preparing for another launch could have taken at least three years, placing it close to the time-sensitive November 2013 launch window for Mars. The next launch opportunity was in 2016, so ISRO decided to launch Mangalyaan on a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket in 2013 instead, however, the PSLV could only place Mangalyaan in a highly elliptical Earth orbit. It would be the spacecraft’s job to fire its engines at precise points in each orbit multiple times over the next few weeks to set itself on a trajectory to Mars, or it would miss the planet entirely. The trajectory design was highly unusual for a Mars mission but it worked. Once the spacecraft arrived at the Red Planet roughly 300 days later, it fired its engines again and successfully entered Mars orbit.
Mangalyaan entered Mars orbit with its closest point to the planet at about 420 kilometers (about 261 miles) and farthest at about 80,000 kilometers (about 49,710 miles), which is a much longer orbit than contemporary Mars missions. Over the years, ISRO reduced the orbit’s size but it never appreciably changed relative to other missions. For example, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mapping mission has a nearly circular orbit of about 300 kilometers (about 186 miles) while ESA’s Mars Express has an orbit of 300 by 10,000 kilometers (about 186 by 6214 miles). Mangalyaan’s large and highly elliptical Mars orbit was tied to its choice of launching on a PSLV rocket. For the PSLV to place Mangalyaan in the desired Earth orbit, the spacecraft couldn’t be any heavier than it was — it couldn’t carry any more fuel. And because Mangalyaan had to get out of Earth orbit by itself, it needed to use its own fuel, which complicated its Mars orbit. This impacted the spacecraft’s scientific observations and mapping capabilities and is partly why Mangalyaan’s scientific output was low. However, Mangalyaan’s orbit did give it a great vantage point to capture full global views of Mars.
The fact that ISRO successfully placed a spacecraft in Mars orbit on its very first attempt garnered attention and worldwide praise. In India, the mission had even deeper effects, aided by ISRO’s inaugural efforts to be active on social media to make people at large aware of the mission. The mission saw several film and TV show adaptations in India, the most popular of which was the dramatized movie, Mission Mangal. The national government decided to feature an illustration of Mangalyaan on the reverse side of India’s highest denomination currency note. Writer Minnie Vaid wrote a book called “Those Magnificent Women and their Flying Machines,” which profiles the journeys of some of the key women who had leading roles in the mission.
Chandrayaan-1 launched on 22 October 2008 aboard a PSLV-XL rocket performed several tasks such as mapping and atmospheric profiling of the Moon. Chandrayaan-2 was launched on 22 July 2019 [15] aboard an LVM3 rocket. The spacecraft was successfully put into lunar orbit on August 20, 2019 [16] but the lander was lost while attempting to land on 6 September 2019. Chandrayaan-3 was launched on 14 July 2023. The primary goals of the Chandrayaan-3 mission encompass three key aspects. Firstly, it aims to showcase a successful and controlled touchdown on the lunar surface. Secondly, it intends to demonstrate the mobility of a rover on the Moon’s terrain. Lastly, it seeks to carry out scientific experiments directly on the lunar surface.
Pakistan space missions conducted by SUPARCO (The Space & Upper Atmosphere Research Commission) is the executive and national space agency of Pakistan. While SUPARCO was established in 1961 to assist the development of space science and research in Pakistan, the agency started to function only in 1964. It started to import and launch sounding rockets in the early 1960s and attained the capability to fabricate rocket engines. However, the agency kept a low profile for the initial 30–35 years of its existence with limited progress in the field of research and its progress in satellite technology also started relatively late.
The country’s first satellite, Badr-I, was built by the SUPARCO and launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, China on July 16, 1990, which provided Pakistani scientists with valuable experience in telemetry and other satellite technologies. SUPARCO played a significant role in the development of Pakistan’s different rocket delivery systems during the early 80s and made significant progress in this regard. In the meantime, the space program suffered many setbacks, difficulties, and problems that partly slowed the progress of the space program. SUPARCO imported and maintained a small amount of rocket fuel for scientific research and announced in 1999 that it would introduce its own satellite and launch vehicles in three years. However, no further details on this program were ever revealed. The agency now has been pursuing Space Programme 2040 since early last decade with the only aim to launch more and more satellites from other countries. SUPARCO has faced significant criticism within Pakistan for not being able to be up to its Indian and Chinese counterparts in terms of capabilities, both of which countries have emerged as major space powers in recent decades
Space Race Between world powers:
The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the two nations following World War II. The technological advantage demonstrated by spaceflight achievement was seen as necessary for national security, and became part of the symbolism and ideology of the time. The Space Race brought pioneering launches of artificial satellites, robotic space probes to the Moon, Venus, and Mars, and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and ultimately to the Moon. Although Germans, Americans and Soviets experimented with small liquid-fuel rockets before World War II, launching satellites and humans into space required the development of larger ballistic missiles such as Wernher von Braun’s Aggregat-4 (A-4), which became known as the Vergeltungswaffe 2 (V-2) developed by Nazi Germany to bomb the Allies in the war. After the war, both the US and USSR acquired custody of German rocket development assets which they used to leverage the development of their own missiles.
The early era of space exploration was driven by a “Space Race” between the Soviet Union and the United States. A driving force of the start of space exploration was during the Cold War. After the ability to create nuclear weapons, the narrative of defense/offense left land and the power to control the air became the focus. Both the Soviet and the U.S. were fighting to prove their superiority in technology through exploring the unknown: Space. In fact, the reason NASA was made was due to the response of Sputnik I. The launch of the first human-made object to orbit Earth, the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1, on 4 October 1957, and the first Moon landing by the American Apollo 11 mission on 20 July 1969 are often taken as landmarks for this initial period. The Soviet space program achieved many of the first milestones, including the first living being in orbit in 1957, the first human spaceflight (Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1) in 1961, the first spacewalk (by Alexei Leonov) on 18 March 1965, the first automatic landing on another celestial body in 1966, and the launch of the first space station (Salyut 1) in 1971. After the first 20 years of exploration, focus shifted from one-off flights to renewable hardware, such as the Space Shuttle program, and from competition to cooperation as with the International Space Station (ISS).
There is lot we can mention here about the space race between world powers and its consequence to the world in general and geo-economics. The reason India wants to set a foot hold in space is said to be predominantly for military purposes along with other space missions and their past ambitions and even future plans clearly demonstrate such plans. Pakistan has to respond by laying out the strategy how to plan the space missions for space explorations and to maintain necessary deterrent.
Having said the above, even nations are trying to capture space for various reasons, there are certain laws that are in place from the United Nations. Space law is the body of law governing space-related activities, encompassing both international and domestic agreements, rules, and principles. Parameters of space law include space exploration, liability for damage, weapons use, rescue efforts, environmental preservation, information sharing, new technologies, and ethics. Other fields of law, such as administrative law, intellectual property law, arms control law, insurance law, environmental law, criminal law, and commercial law, are also integrated within the space law.
The origins of space law date back to 1919, with international law recognizing each country’s sovereignty over the airspace directly above their territory, later reinforced at the Chicago Convention in 1944. The onset of domestic space programs during the Cold War propelled the official creation of international space policy (i.e. the International Geophysical Year) initiated by the International Council of Scientific Unions. The Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, directly spurred the United States Congress to pass the Space Act, thus creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Because space exploration required crossing transnational boundaries, it was during this era where space law became a field independent from traditional aerospace law.
Since the Cold War, the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (the “Outer Space Treaty”) and the International Telecommunication Union have served as the constitutional legal framework and set of principles and procedures constituting space law. Further, the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), along with its Legal and Scientific and Technical Subcommittees, are responsible for debating issues of international space law and policy. The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) serves as the Secretariat of the Committee and is promoting Access to Space for All through a wide range of conferences and capacity-building programs. Challenges that space law will continue to face in the future are fourfold—spanning across dimensions of domestic compliance, international cooperation, ethics, and the advent of scientific innovations. Furthermore, specific guidelines on the definition of airspace have yet to be universally determined.
SUPARCO’s proportionate Response:
As the Indians are showcasing their success in space exploration, regardless of the Indian people’s sufferings, this is just to boost the morale of the Indian people and flexing its muscles in the comity of nations. The media talks in India and across the globe are ongoing and in fact, covering well this Indian space advances.
Pakistan must respond proportionally in order to curb Indian advancements and similarly boost the morale of the Pakistani people. Pakistan at least, should start a space exploration mission in the coming couple of years like Mission MARS and deeper space explorations. If landing on the moon is the way forward to showcase the capabilities of the comity of nations, so do it by all means. These said missions could be launched easily with help from China, if leadership Will exists. Furthermore, SUPARCO must be able to launch space missions within Pakistan in the future, and in order to archive that, aggressive attempts must be made technologically and administratively. Pakistan has a strong missile program and I am certain such technology and know-how do exist in its advanced form so the effort must be focused now on major space exploration. India’s Chandrayaan and Mars-bound Mangalyaan programs signify its ambitious strides in space exploration, showing resilience despite internal economic challenges and basic needs disparities.
Pakistan’s Space & Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) has been slow to progress, facing criticism for falling behind India and China, which have emerged as major space powers.
For Pakistan to uplift national morale and demonstrate global competence, it should initiate space exploration missions, possibly with help from China, and leverage its missile program technology to focus on domestic space mission launches.
Position Paper:
Subject: Pakistan Space Exploration Missions
A proportionate response to Indian Chandrayaan & Mangalyaan
یٰمَعۡشَرَ الۡجِنِّ وَ الۡاِنۡسِ اِنِ اسۡتَطَعۡتُمۡ اَنۡ تَنۡفُذُوۡا مِنۡ اَقۡطَارِ السَّمٰوٰتِ وَ الۡاَرۡضِ فَانۡفُذُوۡا ؕ لَا تَنۡفُذُوۡنَ اِلَّا بِسُلۡطٰنٍ ﴿ۚ۳۳
O Company Of Jinn And Mankind, If You Are Able To Pass Beyond The Regions Of The Heavens And The Earth, Then Pass. You Will Not Pass Except By Authority [From Allah]
X Platform:
Global Space for Geo Economics & Strategy (GSGES)
Description:
Pakistan to uplift national morale & demonstrate global competence, it should initiate space exploration missions, possibly with help from China, and leverage its missile program technology to focus on domestic space mission launches. India’s Chandrayaan National Technologist’s Council Act was drafted and shared with the committee within 15-days. n & Mars-bound Mangalyaan programs signify its ambition in space exploration.
Background:
On November 5, 2013, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched its first spacecraft bound for Mars. India built Mangalyaan to study the Red Planet and test key technologies required for exploring the inner solar system. The Mangalyaan spacecraft successfully entered Mars orbit on September 23, 2014, making ISRO only the fourth space agency in the world to do so. Prior to India, only the United States, the Soviet Union and the European Space Agency (ESA) had successfully explored Mars.
- Chandrayaan-3 was launched on 14 July 2023. The primary goals of the Chandrayaan-3 mission encompass three key aspects.
- Firstly, it aims to showcase a successful and controlled touchdown on the lunar surface. Secondly, it intends to demonstrate the mobility of a rover on the Moon’s terrain.
- Lastly, it seeks to carry out scientific experiments directly on the lunar surface.
As Indians are showcasing their success in space exploration, regardless of the Indian people’s sufferings, just to boost the morale of Indian people and flexing muscles in the comity of nations. The media talks in India and across the globe are ongoing and, in fact, covering well this Indian space advances.
India’s space exploration eventually becomes a challenge for Pakistan due to its potential usage for military purposes.
The Way Forward for Pakistan:
- To compete with global space exploration trends, Pakistan needs to focus on following steps.
- Pakistan must respond proportionally in order to curb Indian advancements and similarly boost the morale of the Pakistani people. Pakistan at least, should start a space exploration mission in the coming couple of years with help from China. A proportionate Response from SUPARCO is the need of the time.
- Pakistan has a strong missile program and certainly such technology and know-how exist in its advanced form and this can be leveraged for major space exploration.
- The opening up of Pakistan National Incubation Center for Aerospace Technologies (NICAT)is certainly a very encouraging step in the direction of space exploration.
- Keeping in mind the economic and security challenges that Pakistan is going through currently, we at least anticipate a plan/layout for future space missions.
- In Short term, the joint collaboration between Pakistan & China could fulfill such planned ambitions.
- In the long term, Pakistan should be self-reliant in the area of space exploration, deeper into the galactic and interstellar space.
- The future war plans are supposed to be tailored in space, Pakistan Must not be left behind.
- Pakistan needs to emphasize on quality high education, prevent brain drain, retain intellectual and human resource and focus on capacity building.
- Revamp existing tech learning structures to be goal oriented including space technology.
- Bring the Economic and political stability that is the fundamental need for Pakistan.
