The shadow of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is seen on the moon’s surface.
ISRO
The list is grim reading: Stuck, failed, missed, failed, failed, stuck, failed, crashed, missed, crashed, crashed.
Those were the fate of the Soviet Union’s first 11 attempts before successfully landing a spacecraft on the moon, in line with a database compiled by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist on the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who catalogs space missions.
Even in the fashionable era — with nine lunar landing attempts since 2013 — the track record remains to be shaky. Before India’s success Wednesday, missions by China, India, Israel, Japan and Russia were three for eight prior to now decade.
McDowell’s database showcases the monumental challenge undertaken by the 50 attempts to land on the moon, with a cheeky scoreboard that reads: Earthlings 23, Gravity 27.
India chocked up its first W against Gravity on Wednesday, after the country’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft safely landed on the lunar surface. The feat makes India the fourth country to successfully land on the moon, and the primary to the touch down near the lunar south pole.
School students watching the live telecast of Chandrayaan-3 landing on the Moon at Sector 20 Brahmananda Public School on August 23, 2023 in Noida, India.
Sunil Ghosh | Hindustan Times | Getty Images
“They need to feel very pleased with this accomplishment,” Jim Bridenstine, who led NASA as administrator from 2018 to 2021, told CNBC.
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Perhaps probably the most remarkable aspect of India’s moon landing is the shoestring budget — by government standards — with which the country achieved the mission. In 2020, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) estimated the Chandrayaan-3 mission would cost about $75 million. The launch was delayed two years, which likely increased the general mission’s cost. ISRO has not responded to CNBC’s request for an updated cost figure.
But that rivals the lowest-cost lunar lander missions in development within the U.S. NASA in recent times turned to having firms compete for fixed-price contracts to construct moon landers, under a program it calls Business Lunar Payload Services. The CLPS program has a maximum budget of $2.6 billion over 10 years, with 14 firms vying for mission contracts typically price upwards of $70 million each.
Overall, NASA’s annual budget dwarfs that of its Indian counterpart. In 2023, the U.S. agency received $25.4 billion in funding, in comparison with the ISRO’s budget of about $1.6 billion. Bridenstine stressed that NASA’s much larger budget is a mirrored image of the “different level of capability” that the U.S. agency offers, with every little thing from a continuous astronaut presence in orbit to missions targeting planets, asteroids and more.
As a percentage of gross domestic product, the U.S. spends probably the most on space — even though it still amounts to only 0.28% of GDP. That ranks well ahead of India’s 0.04% of GDP, in line with a July report on the worldwide space economy by the Space Foundation.
“India must have in its ambitions the need to speculate an increasing number of and develop the capabilities which are more on par with the USA,” Bridenstine said.
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India is increasingly seen as a top player in space geopolitically. While China has succeeded Russia as probably the most significant rival to U.S. influence and capabilities in space, India may yet take that third spot within the space superpower hierarchy.
“I’d hope that they use [Chandrayaan-3] as a possibility to capitalize on the success,” Bridenstine said. “They have a giant economy and they are going to find a way to place money into space exploration.”
“Costs are going to proceed to go down, which is a really positive development for everyone who’s desirous about space exploration,” he added. “And costs to get to the moon are going to go down, especially as we’ve an increasing number of firms doing an increasing number of missions.”
