In the previous week, two spacecrafts arrived at the Red Planet. One of them is from US and the other is from India. Now both crafts are settled in their orbit and are collecting data. But Indian craft is working on its mission with the less fraction of cost as compared to NASA.
Amaresh Kollipara (Managing Partner of Earth 2 Orbit) says that, publicly available statics are 74mn dollars to 75mn dollars range. Bruse Jakosky researcher at University of Colorado Boulder and the primary investigator on the project says that, the cost of NASA mission is 637mn dollars and our project completes in less than what we expected. So, why did American mission cost so much more? Certainly, people have forgotten to ask this but we have been expecting this question, Jakosky said.
It means that there exists more than one reason why India’s mission cost less. First reason is the spacecraft itself is not that much stylish as compared to its NASA’s counterpart, and it’s not designated to last longer. Indian craft also contains less cameras and scientific doohickeys, and they also choose a cheaper orbit around mars. As NASA craft came nearer to the Mars then it fired its engines a lot, to slow itself to settle into a circular orbit. India’s craft did not need to slow down as much because it is orbiting in a big oval with Mars.
The disadvantage of Indian space craft is that, it only gets close to Mars once every few days. It possesses fewer firings of engine which means it need less fuel. It is also lighter in weight which made it much cheaper to launch. Jakosky says that, we have almost 600 peoples working on the project on Earth which made this launch much cheaper.
On the other hand, India has one of the best aerospace engineers and they are cheap too, Kollipara told. He further stated that, “I heard that an engineer got Rs. 50,000 to 60,000/month, which equals to 1000 dollars a month. I am quite sure that the NASA’s engineers could earn a lot more.”
Currently, India’s engineers are not just working to build rockets, but the country is making great efforts in terms of high-tech manufacturing, Kollipara revealed.
The industry is continuously expanding, he said. “We will likely to have more meticulousness manufacturing out of numerous industries, I believe, which will emerge out of India in the upcoming decade.”
Thought, our space goals aren’t ended either. Perhaps, the subsequent footstep would be putting an astronaut into orbit.