In early September, if all goes according to plan, an unmanned Indian spacecraft will touch down where none has landed before: less than 400 miles from the forbidding south pole of the moon.
Besides measuring quantities of water — which could help in the manufacture of potable water and rocket fuel to sustain future manned missions — the Indian mission is also expected to gather data on deposits of materials such as helium-3, which Indian scientists say could be harvested for use in nuclear reactors on Earth.
Six years later, an Indian satellite went into orbit around Mars. This year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the successful test of an antisatellite weapon, India’s first noncivilian space initiative and a sign that the country — soon to surpass Britain to become the world’s fifth largest economy — aims to become a comprehensive space power.The civilian missions have also won attention for being much cheaper than those of other countries, largely because of low labor costs.
, and his administration has said it would consider employing commercial rockets to meet that goal. That could include rockets such as the kind being developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, two of the world’s best funded private space initiatives.
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