[Voiceover Countdown] Plus one ... two... three.. liftoff
Newshour: In early November, India launched a 320-ton rocket
on a mission to Mars.
If all goes according to plan, the Indian spacecraft will travel 485 million miles
over more than 10 months and go into the orbit around Mars in September.
The US, former Soviet Union and the European Space Agency
are the only ones to have accomplished the feat
Dr K Radhakrishnan : It is a challenging task, a complex task
Newshour : Dr K Radhakrishnan is the director of the
Indian Space Research organisation
He was one of the engineers looking on when the Mangalyan
or 'Mars craft' in Hindi launched
The probe will be studying the atmosphere of Mars,
and looking for traces of methane, which could be a sign of previous life.
Dr Radhakrishnan: A lot of things are known about Mars
But there are several issues which are yet to be understood, and understood precisely
Newshour : The mission to Mars is a source of immense national pride in India
but it might also signal a new Asian space race, and it's already
triggered a debate about the benefits of exploring another planet,
when so many Indians struggle for basic necessities
Though it has been in existence for nearly fifty years, the very fact that
India has a space program is unknown to much of the world
But since its inception, India has not only launched a mission to Mars
but has sent a probe to the moon, and has built and launched 70 satelites
that do everything from measuring water resources to enabling
mobile communications in rural India.
Radhakrishnan says that at its heart, India's space program is meant
to improve life for India's 1.2 billion people.
One critical mission is to predict where and when storms will hit land,
so people in the storm's path can be taken to safety.
In 1999, when a massive storm hit India's east coast
more than 10,000 people died.
But a few months ago, when another powerful storm hit the same area,
only 21 people died. Nearly a million people had evacuated
after early warning data from Indian satelites
Dr Radhakrishnan: Part of this use of earth observation satellite is
to provide services to the fisherman, to the farmer, to the decision-maker
at the grassroot level.
Newshour: : So how does understanding the atmosphere of Mars,
or whether there was methane, help the farmer, or the fisherman in India?
Dr. Radhakrishnan: It is not directly; understanding of the atmosphere of Mars
is not going to help him immediately, directly.
Newshour: But he says technology from the Mars mission will help improve
the satellites India has yet to launch, which will directly benefit
ordinary Indian citizens.
But beyond the tangible scientific benefits, the feat of sending a rocket
to Mars has been a huge point of pride for India.
As the Mars spacecraft left Earth's orbit, Indians took to Twitter
to express their excitement, a point echoed by Dr. Radhakrishnan
who says the mission has inspired the nation.
Dr. Radhakrishnan: People are keeping awake in the night to see
how the Mars orbiter operations are progressing.
So if you can transform so many young minds, and they say "yes, we need to
take up a career in science," it is a big transformation
for the country, for the future.
Newshour: And working for the space agency is prestigious.
Hundreds of thousands of engineers have applied for just a few hundred slots.
The pride is also in part for how little India spends to explore space.
The Mars mission costs 4.5 billion rupees, or just over 70 million dollars.
Compare that to the Maven mission, a similar NASA probe that's also currently
en route to Mars. It costs nearly ten times as much.
The savings are achieved in part because engineering labour is cheaper.
The Indian program recycles and adapts components like launch vehicles
and builds far fewer models, relying heavily on computer testing.
But spending any money on space exploration here is controversial.
India is still a developing country, where nearly a third of the population,
about 400 million people, live on less than $1.25 a day.
Brinda Adige runs an NGO called Global Concerns India,
focused on women and children, here in a slum in the city of Bangalore,
less than ten miles from the headquarters of the Indian Space Agency.
She says she was sad when she first heard about the Mars mission.
Adige: At one end of the spectrum, so much of money that is being spent
to send a rocket out into outer space, when we know that here on Earth
in my country, there are children dying every day because they have no food
to eat. So many more going away, spending their days and nights
without electricity. No roads, no education, no protection for women
and the girl child, anywhere in this country.
NewsHour: Do you think that, if they didn't spend the money on the satellite,
that they would spend the money on women and girls' issues?
Adige: No, they would not. They would not.
Their priorities are certainly not looking at children, women, human beings
who are in need of basic necessities just to live.
NewsHour: So you're not against the science, just the priorities.
Adige: Yes.
NewsHour: Adige gathered a group of women from the slum
who echoed some of the same concerns.
I asked the group that, given the millions being spent on the mission to Mars,
what kind of impact additional money could have in this neighborhood.
They described a litany of issues including bad roads, lack of access
to medical care, the high costs of education, and complaints about
sanitation issues like sewage runoff after the rains
and a lack of safe drinking water.
One of these women, Manoja, who works as a cook in a nicer part of town,
took us to her mother-in-law's house, and showed us
the contaminated water that comes out of her pipes.
Manoja [interpreted]: All of this water in the house smells terrible.
NewsHour: It smelt rancid.
This is the municipal water the family pays for from the city.
They have to spend extra on trucked-in clean drinking water:
money they don't have.
But Dr. Radhakrishnan defends the Indian Space Program budget --
in total, about a billion dollars a year.
NewsHour: On a global level, India's program is incredibly inexpensive.
On a local level, it's still very hard for people to comprehend on the streets
of Bangalore or elsewhere, spending so much money going to a different planet.
Dr. Radhakrishnan: The question is in absolute terms when you talk about
the $1 billion that we spend annually. Is it providing the benefits to the people?
Space is touching the lives of every man and woman in this country.
NewsHour: Radhakrishnan points out that the entire Indian Space Program
accounts for one-third of one percent of the nation's budget.
Those numbers may make it easier to justify what may be a larger goal:
competing with another superpower.
Just last month, China became the third country behind the US
and the former Soviet Union to land a rover on the moon,
and China has successfully completed manned space flights
a feat several years away for India.
But in going to Mars, India could best its neighbor.
The competition is a fuel India is reluctant to admit.
In November 2011, a joint Chinese-Russian Mars mission failed.
NewsHour: Is there political pressure to keep up with the next-door-neighbor, China?
Dr. Radhakrishnan: Each country has their own priorities,
their own vision for the space program.
India has its vision, China has its vision.
We are pursuing our vision.
NewsHour: It doesn't matter when China does what it does?
Dr. Radhakrishnan: It does its program, we do our program.
NewsHour: But it was right after China's failure that the Prime Minister here said,
"Here's our priority, we're going to Mars."
Dr. Radhakrishnan: See, November 2013 is an opportune time for
a mission to Mars. And such opportune time occurs only once in 26 months.
NewsHour: While the Indian launch date did capitalize on when the distance
between Mars and the earth is shorter, to critics like Brinda Adige,
this is simply a space race.
Adige: You've gone to Mars, now I also have to go to Mars.
You've reached moon? I must also go and see whether there's water
on moon or not. Whether my people down here in this country have
drinking water or not, is a quandary.
The question arises, "To what end?"
NewsHour: To administrators like Dr. Radhakrishnan, success with
the Mars mission is another step in helping the world see the red planet,
and India, in a new way.