Tag: CartoSat 3

Despite the Great IRS Tech, India’s Remote-Sensing Programme Remains a Downer

In the late 1990s, space agencies from around the world sought India’s remote-sensing products. However, structural and logistical aspects of the satellite fleet continue to hold it back.

India launched Cartosat 3, its nineteenth Earth-observation satellite in Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), on board a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) on November 27. As part of its C47 mission, the PSLV also successfully delivered 13 American satellites, including 12 from Planet Labs, the private remote-sensing company.

Ahead of Cartosat 3’s operationalisation, India has a fleet of 18 operational Earth-observation satellites in the SSO. These are the IRS P6 (Resourcesat 1), IRS P5 (Cartosat 1), IRS P7 (Cartosat 2), Cartosat 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 2E and 2F, Oceansat 2, Resourcesat 2 and 2A, Megha-Tropiques, RISAT 1, 2 and 2B, SARAL and Scatsar. In addition, India operates four satellites in the geostationary orbit: INSAT 3A, 3D and 3DR.

The Cartosat series of satellites has been the flag-bearer of the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) system.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched the oldest IRS satellite that’s still operational, Resourcesat 1, in 2003. The organisation accelerated its launch rate from 2007, adding 14 of the remaining functional IRS satellites in only a dozen years, although unevenly so. There were two launches each in 2008 and 2009 but only five between 2010 and 2016. Then, ISRO launched five more in only two years, 2016 and 2017, followed by only one each in 2018 and 2019. Oceansat 3 and Resourcesat 3 will be launched in 2020 and 2021, respectively.

The organisation launched eight of the 18 satellites between 2003 to 2010. While these machines continue to provide new information, the later satellites use are equipped with better technology that in turn provides better information.

Faster replacement

A good practice for satellites in the lower-Earth orbit is to plan for an average lifespan of five years. Only seven of the 18 satellites fall in that category. The others are older.

This is the appropriate backdrop against which we must address the launch of Cartosat 3. This launch provided a fillip to the IRS programme and is expected to bridge some important technological gaps. ISRO needs to launch more remote-sensing satellites per year to deliver more and better imaging capabilities more frequently.

Also read: Are ISRO and India Willing to Do What It Takes to Make It in Space?

In the late 1990s, India gave the impression of being a capable space-imaging nation, and space agencies from around the world sought its imaging products. This attention is not at all unwarranted; for example, Cartosat 3 is capable of delivering 25-cm resolution images for civilian use – a cutting edge specification.

However, the technological accomplishment isn’t exactly matched by the structural and logistical aspects of the IRS fleet. For starters, we need to be able to provide more frequent and higher resolution images for better prices to cater to commercial requirements.

The IRS data ISRO helps produce is used by the Indian government and its agencies as well as Indian and multinational companies.

The country’s fishing community has been at the centre of one of the more studied impacts of remote-sensing. ISRO and the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) developed a programme to use data from the Oceansat 1 and Oceansat 2 satellites, launched in 1999 and 2009, respectively, and give fishermen accurate information on where they could find fish. According to one report, India’s piscine exports quadrupled as a result from 2004 to 2014. Similarly, Scatsat, launched in 2016, provides accurate data on atmospheric depression and cyclones in the Bay of Bengal through INCOIS, helping fishers navigate better.

That said, we have failed in terms of building satellites that can be replaced before their end-of-life, so when older instruments expire, a data gap shows up until a replacement instrument is launched. For example, Oceansat and Resourcesat have both far exceeded their scheduled lifespans of five years. ISRO launched Oceansat 2 in 2009 and Resourcesat 2 in 2011. They reached their expiry dates in 2014 and 2016, respectively, but their replacements – Oceansat 3 and Resourcesat 3 – are scheduled to liftoff only six and five years later.

We have allowed older satellites to linger for at least twice their planned lifetime. Despite the fantastic stories about the return of investment that these satellites provide, we don’t factor in the risk of working with satellites that are liable to fail.

Such failure would precipitate a gap in our data for a long time before a replacement instrument is built and launched. It would mean being at a disadvantage while a competitor – whether commercial or military – gains an unfair advantage. Above all, it would mean losing an opportunity to reduce the space-junk problem by moving the satellite to a graveyard orbit when it still has the fuel to do so. And while pushing satellite operations for two years past its planned expiry as we await a successor is just fine, pushing it further endangers our information gathering system and poses a risk to other satellites in orbit.

On the other hand, operating an up-to-date fleet means better, more accurate information that informs better decisions that help Indian citizens and the government. One way to do this is to enhance the PSLV’s launch schedule and undertake more launches per year, so that satellites are replaced just when or even shortly before they’re set to expire. And for this, ISRO needs to plan better to build the rockets and launch them, both on time. (This isn’t a straightforward exercise; for instance, the failure of Chandrayaan 2’s surface mission has already delayed the launch of the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle and a test flight of the Reusable Launch Vehicle.)

Lack of focus

Second, ISRO hasn’t done enough to help the end-users of its products understand how high-end remote sensing data can be applied to solve real-world problems. Rather than wait for its customers to ask for this or that solution solution, the organisation advertises its products (so to speak) and waits for customers to ask for a specific product.

The Bhuvan geoportal is a classic example. When the government first launched it (online, not into space), the country’s space business community hailed it as India’s answer to Google Maps. ISRO intended to use it to visualise two- and three-dimensional features using data obtained from the IRS satellites. But today, Bhuvan is a geoportal with important geospatial information waiting for a user to use it whereas most users have no idea that such data is available on Bhuvan.

A few companies have been trying to fix this gap. For example, SatSure, a private company, has been using ISRO data to help insurance companies ascertain the claims they are expected to settle are for real, verifiable crop loss. Again, even as such solutions exist, they remain exceptional and not many people in need of them know of them.

Third, India’s geographical location and its political context require the government to constantly monitor its neighbourhood in the entire electromagnetic spectrum. To do this, we need not one but a range of satellites that track and transmit data in various spectra. We also need satellite constellations, like the Planet Labs’ fleet of ‘Doves’ that the company uses for frequent data collection at lower resolutions, to, say, track natural disasters, monitor troop movements and assist with planning for any emergencies.

Also read: Don’t Panic! The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Creating a Space Startup in India

In the last decade or so, ISRO has broadened its focus, from providing Earth-observation satellites, communication satellites and experimental instruments to testing new technologies, navigation systems and executing interplanetary missions. The Department of Space, the government entity that funds and administers ISRO, however hasn’t been able to balance the various requirements arising as a result. There are often periods of heightened focus on remote-sensing and then periods when the attention is turned elsewhere.

ISRO set up the National Remote Sensing Centre in Hyderabad as a point of contact on these matters but the body hasn’t been able to do much when DoS’s priority shifts seasonally to other matters.

* * *

It might be useful in this regard to fuel the growth of the private ecosystem, which can catalyse the commercial applications of IRS products. A private IRS manufacturer could, for example, take charge of areas like fishing, agriculture, geospatial data analysis, infrastructure management and climate change studies with help from the respective ministries. They could build smaller satellites that provide higher frequency of coverage at par with the Doves. They could also play an important role in surfacing applications for fields that aren’t traditionally associated with remote-sensing.

A greater thrust on such commercial applications could easily position India as the world’s premier satellite-services provider with end-to-end offerings, from building instruments, launching them, collecting and processing the data to finally delivering them to end-users.

Pradeep Mohandas is an engineer based in Pune and likes to follow Indian space developments.

As Chandrayaan Surface Mission Ends, ISRO Needs Support, Constructive Criticism

Only if we remember what our failures are – not what they have been spun into – can we hope to correct them in the future.

Bangalore: Shortly before 2.30 am on September 7, as a robot the size of a Tata Nano descended over the lunar surface for what was to be a historic Moon landing, something happened.

We don’t know what it is yet. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), whose scientists made this robot (as well as the smaller robot it contained), have promised answers soon but they can’t seem to come soon enough. Whatever happened, Vikram crashed on the Moon’s surface instead of touching down and its part of the Chandrayaan 2 mission was deemed a failure.

By 3:30 am, ISRO officials, led by its chairman K. Sivan, confirmed that the organisation had lost its communications link with the larger robot, named for Vikram Sarabhai. By 4 am, work had begun to restore this link, together with other efforts to salvage this part of the mission – a part that had, until that moment, basked in the public glare.

Whether it was the pressure to deliver a positive result – accentuated by the presence of the media-savvy Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the control room – or a complete and not unheard-of inability to manage public relations in the event of a failure, ISRO sought refuge in spin.

The organisation’s reps began to talk about how India’s new lunar orbiter, the only part of Chandrayaan 2 that had succeeded, was actually the most important part of the mission. It was a doctoring exercise that ISRO, with the support of right-wing Twitter trolls, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fanatics online and off and practically everyone who couldn’t reimagine failures as teaching moments, began to execute.

By the morning of September 8, the mainstream media was flush with reports that apparently 95% of the mission had ‘succeeded’. Notes of congratulations proliferated online. Everywhere you looked, it was as if the orbiter was the whole point all along and that everyone was proud of ISRO’s work.

This was the ‘high’, when, pumped with the drugs of nationalism, questions are taboo and criticism leads to death threats. Closely reflecting an undercurrent of Modi’s reign as the prime minister, casual observers had conflated technology with science and reason had been pushed to the backseat. There was no greater example of this than the repeated and grossly mistaken claims that ISRO wanted to mine the lunar regolith for helium-3.

In the two weeks following the events of September 7, the country slowly but surely forgot what really happened – not the actual cause of the mishap but its relative significance in the larger scheme of things – and moved on to other entertainment.

A few news outlets published a flurry of unverified reports while news syndication services amplified everything Sivan or Modi or anyone else said about the mission. The explosion of articles about why the orbiter was the real deal persisted, though now as a trickle. NASA also made the occasional appearance since it had offered the services of its lunar orbiter for ISRO to spot its lander, which – according to some source or other – now lay prone on the Moon a mere 500 m from its original landing site.

Also read: With Chandrayaan 2 Setting Sail, What Will India Put on the Moon Next?

Meanwhile, in their aggressive desire to not cede even an inch to their political opponents, the BJP’s critics began to ask if Chandrayaan 2 was a sensible way to spend the money and time the government had, with little regard for how India’s historically unique space programme is tied to the country’s vast public administration system.

The stage is now set for big media to move on because Chandrayaan 2 isn’t the only major thing on ISRO’s agenda this year. Imminent missions include the first flight of the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle, the launch of CartoSat 3, the testing of its first semi-cryogenic engine and Gaganyaan. However, moving on should not be an excuse to forget.

Say the Chandrayaan 2 mission could be cleanly cut into two parts (though it can’t for technical reasons): science and technology. When the lander failed to execute its autonomous touchdown, the technological mission was, in the basest terms, only one-third complete; the scientific mission was yet to begin. There is no moral or ethic attached to this qualification but the problem, such as in the form of a perceived need to spin the failure into a triumphalist narrative, arises when one assumes otherwise.

When a developing country’s debut lunar landing mission fails, it doesn’t at all fail in the same way as, for example, a unique identity programme does when it causes personal information to leak into the public domain.

ISRO could have said there was a mistake because that is eminently understandable, and everyone could have moved on knowing that the more we learn from this incident, the more failure-proof its successor could be. Instead, it couldn’t admit a mistake without also reiterating what it had got right.

Also read: Why Chandrayaan 2 Was a Success Well Before ‘Vikram’ Got to the Moon

We are now at the twilight of Chandrayaan 2’s landing mission. The lander and the robot inside it, a rover named Pragyan, are both fit with lithium-ion cells that store energy produced by solar panels on their bodies and discharge it through wires to various instruments. Sadly these cells are not designed to be able to withstand an ambient temperature of under -160º C, and nights on the Moon have been known to plunge to -180º C.

This is why Chandrayaan 2’s surface mission was restricted to 14 Earth days: it corresponds to one half of a day on the Moon, and which – from September 7 to September 21 – experienced daylight in the part where the lander was supposed to touchdown. Today, the Sun will set on the part of the Moon where the lander is stranded and the lunar night will begin, and the batteries on the lander and rover will likely die.

Despite the Left’s misdirected protests, the Right’s misguided assertions and some scientists’ informed reservations, the Indian space programme could not have avoided Chandrayaan 2. Did the mission have any shortcomings? Absolutely, as do all ISRO missions thanks to their attendant political economics and sociology. Chandrayaan 2 was – and in the form of the orbiter, remains – India’s first major step towards the Moon, the mandatory exploratory leap that has to precede more advanced and more strategically charged programmes of the future.

We can help ISRO along with sensitive support, constructive criticism and a dogged demand for answers from one of the most inaccessible organisations in the country. But we must also constantly remember what failures are, not what they have been spun into.