'India could take 20-30 years to send humans to Moon'

Director of Space Application Centre in Ahmedabad, Nilesh Desai, on Friday, said that India could take at least two to three decades to send manned missions to the Moon. The statement comes days after India landed Chandrayaan-3 on the lunar south polar region.

“We could send a manned mission, America and Russia have already done it. But India will take some time because we don’t just need to send a man, but bring him back alive as well. We need upgrades in technology for it. Only if we have well-tested techniques can we take this step. It may take India at least 20-30 years for this,” Desai said.

Talking about the ongoing Chandrayaan-3 mission and the constant data being sent by both the Vikram Lander and the rover from the south polar region of the Moon, the director added, “We have the results from the laser LIBS spectrogram, and sulphur has been seen permanently, which was not found in experiments by other countries. The spectral line related to sulphur is clearly visible in the spectrograph. Basically, the rocks and the soil on the Moon’s surface contain sulphur in a good amount.”

On the question of hopes of survival of life on the Moon, he said, “We don’t have evidence that there was ever a life on the Moon, there has been no evidence of it ever happening in the last 52 years since lunar explorations began. However, we are trying to find out if life can be sustained there in the future. For life to sustain there, one requires carbon, water and other elements, just like on Mars we were studying Methane gas."

He said that the Chandrayaan-1 mission had found hydroxyl molecules. Our endeavour is to see if there is something new in the south polar region this time, since there are lots of craters and boulders. If there is frozen ice on the rim of these craters, then we could look at evidence of water in the future. We have found traces of oxygen and if we find hydrogen also, then hydrogen and oxygen together can form a basis for the creation of water."

On differences in surface temperature on the Moon, Desai said, “We landed when it was sunrise on the Moon, so surface temperatures are warmer than usual. It is daylight there, therefore we saw that most layers are as hot as 50 degrees Celsius, just like the Earth. When we inserted probes inside the surface which had ten sensors, we found that the temperature ten centimetres inside the Moon’s surface is -10 degrees Celsius. We expected this also, but we need to measure this at different times as well.”

He further said, “We are racing against time. We missed 2-3 days for the rover movement, so out of 14 earth days we had, we were able to do 11 days' worth of experiments. We had faced some connectivity and visibility issues with rover movement. We did not have access to the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (JPL) Earth Station this time. They are busy with their work. We have made optimal use of everything, considering the constraints we had. We were able to move the rover up to 30 metres in a day. So, the expectations are to move the rover to a 300-400 metres movement in these 11 days, so we have more data from the rover's payload. The lander payload is already collecting data. In the next 2-3 days we have to do more things optimally. We can’t repeat experiments. It won’t be very helpful,” he said.

The distinguished scientist also spoke about the major challenges of India's maiden solar mission and added, “Once the launch happens, then it will be a challenging course, 127 days and a trip of 15 lakh kilometres and then the insertion into Halo orbit. So the work will only begin after 127 days. It’s a big challenge to insert it (satellite) into Halo orbit after sending it there. There are 7 payloads that will be giving us data for the next 5 years.”

Isro has cleared the launch authorisation and the countdown has already begun for the lift-off of the Aditya L1 mission to study the Sun.

“The mission readiness and launch readiness is on track and there are no issues as such. We have to launch the satellite, we have cleared the launch authorisation and the countdown has already begun today,” he said in Ahmedabad.

Desai added that they have timed the launch with the ongoing solar cycle and the Sun is witnessing an increased level of activity. "From 2025-2028 there will be increased solar activities due to which we will be able to witness sun flares and sun spots, sun storms and other kinds of phenomenons, and we will be able to catch these in activities in action," he added.