Space Exploration

The most common thing around the world at present is the human suffering. Poverty, starvation, violence, pandemic, epidemics, disease, wildfire, hurricane, pollution, climate change and many more are constantly plaguing the humanity, which even with the best efforts are far away from being addressed.

Simultaneously, on one side the rate of unemployment is increasing everyday with no new jobs being generated and employed ones losing their jobs due to economic crisis or slump in economic demand, while on the other side prices of essential commodities for daily life, essential public utility services (including transport, health care units, petroleum products, internet etc.), medicines and lifesaving drugs are all rapidly increasing. At the time when poor people are finding hard to keep their body and soul together, many are searching for places to cut funding, ostensibly for diverting more towards humanitarian needs, one obvious debate that often comes up is ‘extraneous spending over inessential scientific research’. How will or till what extent microgravity experiments will be beneficial when children are starving? How are the massive expenditures on space mission justifiable when several parts of the country and in the world are yet to receive electricity, railway or other transport connectivity and several other essential services? Why can’t that money be spend on researches for curing AIDS and cancer like diseases, in researching new forms of renewable energy, investing more on nuclear energy, for assisting the transition to renewable energy, alleviating poverty, addressing climate change, modernizing the armed forces of the country, ….?

These are just a few among several questions that are often raised over the expenditure of public money made by each country on space researches. In India, the total proposed expenditure by the government in the budget 2020-21 was ₹30,42,230 crore, out of which ₹13,479 crore was allocated for the India Space Research Organization (ISRO).

Impact of Space Programmes

Space is final frontier and something that has intrigued humans ever since civilisation began to emerge. The Soviet Union became the first to make it to space in the year 1957 after launching their Sputnik 1 satellite. It was followed by several other satellites and subsequently first animal (Laika, the dog) and first man and woman in 1961 & 1963. They were cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova. Yuri Gagarin flew to space as a part of Vostok 1 mission while Valentina Tereshkova was a part of Vostak 6 mission.  

Space exploration and space technology have contributed immensely to the world. Space exploration needs research materials science, human biology & medicine, energy production, propulsion systems, electronics, computers, communications, nanotechnology, weather forecasting, geology, waste-recycling systems and many more areas. Almost everything that a human does is involved in it. It has made immeasurable impact on the economy and on the human society in terms of new products and services. A few of them which are making positive impacts today are discussed below:-

• Weather Prediction & Climate Monitoring - Accurate weather forecasting enabled by space technologies has become a critical element in our everyday lives, impacting our personal, government and industry decision making. Weather forecasting satellites warn us from storms, rains, heat waves etc. and thus protect millions of lives every year. Additionally, the earth observing satellites helps in monitoring the greenhouse gases and crucial climate indicators which helps in preserving the earth’s ecosystem. Without the help of these satellites, collecting such information would not have been possible and thus we would not have robust plans to deal with climate change.
• Observation of Earth Resources – Artificial satellites helps in screening wide areas of land within a very short span of time. It evaluates a wide variety of factors and provides information & support for production of agriculture, management of fisheries, freshwater and forestry and also tracks harmful human activities such as animal poaching, illegal lodging, wildfires, and environmentally pernicious mining.  Artificial satellites’ contributions in agricultural fields have brought immense improvement and increase in the productivity level which is equivalent to billions of dollars.
• Communication Services - Space communication capabilities undoubtedly impact most of the aspect of human civilization. The technologies used in satellites have revolutionized navigation activities, banking & finance operations, and everyday communications, through international & long-distance national phone and video calls, streaming media, satellite TV and radio to a become complete routine.
• Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Services - Global PNT satellite systems, enables to pinpoint a location within a few meters anywhere on the Earth’s surface. This has enhanced the land & sea navigation, military operations, logistics, electrical grids, precision agriculture and several other industrial & societal aspects of human life. Space-based location services installed in mobile phones which are used by numerous applications on mobile phones have become so much intertwined with our modern life that any abrupt cessation is viewed as catastrophic.
• Telemedicine – The need of monitoring the health of astronauts at a distance lead to the invention in the field of telemedicine. This invention is used today to monitor health of people from rural and other remote communities where experts from other parts of the country cannot reach. This even includes intricate operations and surgeries. Technologies used for monitoring health of astronauts during space missions lead to invention of implantable medical devices which are used to monitor in utero through telemetry. Converging the advances being made in miniaturization, automation & remotely operated technologies are assisting in revolutionizing medicine, biosensors, bioinformatics, nanotechnology and many more.
• Widening Economic and Social Opportunities – Among several economic and social benefits contributed by space technologies, one major contribution was the invention of  Micro-electromechanical Systems (MEMS) . Primarily it was invented for monitoring the health and activities of astronauts but currently its applications are found in accelerometers, micro-optics, chemical & flow sensors, optical scanners & fluid pumps. The annual growth rate projected by the MEMS industry is 10-20%. Moreover, Space technologies also results in high-tech jobs, thus creates a huge employment opportunities as well.
• Inspires STEAM Education – A healthy space sector inspires people about new frontiers, new technologies and new discoveries and thus foster interest in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, & Math), which consequently leads to a scientifically literate society capable of participating in the rising technology-driven world.
• Strengthens International Relations - Joint space projects with different nations often acts as the positive force countering mutual suspicion & geopolitical rivalries. The ISS or International Space Station is a prime example in this context. Joint Space programmes fosters the interconnections and interdependencies within the nations.
• Enhanced Diagnostic Precision – The Hubble digital imagining system was used in Mammography for greater diagnostic precision. Later this enhanced precision technique was used for breast biopsy to outpatients which resulted in increased accuracy of breast cancer diagnostic procedures.
• Space Spinoffs for Earth - Since the emergence of the space program and space exploration, there have been over two thousand such examples where technologies developed from space programmes were found beneficial for uses on Earth. These includes freeze-dried food, cordless power tools, the integrated circuit, flame-resistant firefighter gear, lightning detection, improvements in kidney dialysis, lightweight insulation and automated credit card transaction. Every year NASA tracks spinoffs across a wide range of topics including public safety, transportation, energy & environment, consumer goods, industrial productivity, informational technology, and health & medicine.

Apart from these benefits, space programs also provide many long term prospects. A few among many are –

• Megaconstellations – It is an emerging business with vast potential of improving the efficiency, security and capacity of multiple services to Earth based business consumers by drastically reducing communication latency on one side while increasing throughput & global coverage on other. Data satellite constellations – planned for launching mostly to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), will benefit business end-users of services in banking, energy, maritime, cellular , internet, and government sectors. This service business is focused on everyday Internet use and will provide high-bandwidth coverage globally and high-speed services that will benefit billions of people.
• Space Tourism – There is a strong desire among a large number of people to travel into the space. A survey conducted on Space tourism indicated that over 60% of the Americans desires to travel into the space if they can afford a ticket. Hence, opening up of space tourism will definitely open a big business arena and add huge amount to the country’s economy.
• Prevention of Asteroid impact- We all are knowledgeable that asteroids with huge potential possess great harm if enters the Earth’s atmosphere and reaches the surface. Developing an early warning system might reduce such threats and help in taking such decisions where deflection would be the only way to avoid devastating life loss on Earth.
• Material Recycling, Closed-loop Ecosystems, and Utilization of In-situ Resources - Limited physical resources & inherently high operating cost in space naturally pushes for system designs toward efficient utilization & recycling of water, gases, nutrients and  several other materials for life support and other such uses. Efficient reuse and recycling of plastics, steel, aluminium and other structural materials confer huge benefit as well. Once all these systems are ready for space applications, the potential of applying these technologies on Earth is enormous. It will save energy and material resources and shift people’s outlook from once through to circular economic thinking. Additionally, there is a requirement for large scale space operations to rely more on in situ resources, literally using rocks & regolith around that rockets land as raw materials for life support, construction, and other needs. If it is possible to develop such processes in space with a high degree of efficiency & reliability, then there is also a potential for them to be customized and use them on Earth for construction & processed goods.

Conclusion

The above mentioned prospects are just a few among the several long term benefits that are being planned through space programmes. Space researchers are also working on to develop such technologies which will make it possible even to dispose off waste, especially nuclear waste away from the Earth; preserving ecosystem on space, migration of human population into space etc. Yes, it is true that space programmes cannot directly mitigate hunger or starvation or poverty or malnutrition like grave issues, but it definitely contributes towards improving the conditions of our daily life. It open up a big knowledge hub in the field of physics, chemistry, biology, and physiology and more particularly in the world of medicine and health care to cope with all these issues which threatens our life: disease, hunger, contamination of food & water, environmental pollution. Again, the space program provides wonderful opportunities for engaging in truly magnificent researches on moons and planets, of physics, astronomy, biology and medicine is almost an ideal catalyst that induces the reaction between motivation for scientific work and opportunities to observe exciting phenomena of nature apart from material support required to carry out such research efforts. However, these are just a few examples of benefits the space research provides – a whole new & exciting world of exploration lies ahead.

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