DNA Edit: When some go low, others go high

To infinity and beyond may seem like child’s play but it takes real resources, backing and strategy to pull off. ISRO hasn’t had much of the first, has mustered up the second with great difficulty, thanks to oodles of the latter. 2016 in particular has been one triumphant year for the mighty mouse amongst international space programmes. 

As it successfully placed remote sensing satellite RESOURCESAT-2A into its designated orbit on Wednesday, ISRO is the one Indian institution that deserves not only to pat itself on the back, but needs a rousing standing ovation, in a year where even the stately RBI looks like it is failing us. 

The chutzpah of ISRO is that it doesn’t stop. Nothing is enough. Even as it sends one up, it let’s you know the next one is coming—GSLV MK 3 in January 2017, to be precise, which will be India’s heaviest rocket. Earlier this year in June they achieved the impossible task of sending up 20 rockets on a single mission, the PSLV C-34. 

Lest it appear that ISRO is in the business of breaking world records, in fact, it comes from a very real need to cut costs and maximise resources—something that’s been the credo of the organisation since first propounded by Dr Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai. 

In 1961, when ISRO’s pioneering team of now legendary scientists led by these two men selected Thumba, a small fishing village in Kerala, as the spot at which to send up India’s first rocket, to study equatorial electrojets at the earth’s geomagnetic centre, it was a strategic need to conserve resources and make a beginning, no matter how humble. When the site selected clashed with a local church, whose deity held some sentimental value, they enlisted the support of local Bishop, Father Bernard Pereira, and the church was shifted. TERLS (Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station) was built, today home to the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. Apart from anecdotal value, this incident set the foundation for ISRO being able to work within India’s unique cultural framework, within our scant resources and, enlisting international and national and local support, reach the moon. 

Chairman of ISRO Kiran Kumar laughs that his publicity budget since inception doesn’t surpass NASA’s for a single year, but the resource crunch—not for want of allocation, but for practical concerns of being a country with other priorities—has pushed them to constantly seek a new edge. 

Mangalyaan went up at one fourth the cost of other missions, ISRO found evidence of water on the moon, and its expansion into fields from mapping highways to groundwater, and pioneering efforts in telecom and defence. ISRO as India’s Man Friday has done more for our national identity than any any flag waving has.