Chandrayaan-3: India's frugal moon mission stuns world

Tribune News Service

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, August 24

For a nation that grew up on visuals of ISRO scientists carrying rocket cones on bicycles, the historic success of a stunningly frugal Moon Mission may not come as a huge surprise, but for the world it does.

At a cost of Rs 615 crore, Chandrayaan-3 is already being billed as perhaps the cheapest space mission in the world. In contrast, China’s Chang’e 4 successfully soft-landed on the moon’s far side at an estimated cost of Rs 1,752 crore, while Russia’s Luna 25, which crashed on the moon’s surface recently, had cost nearly Rs 1,600 crore.

World leaders congratulate PM

• PM Narendra Modi was personally congratulated by at least two dozen leaders at the BRICS summit in Johannesburg following Chandrayaan's soft landing on Wednesday
• Videos showed leaders seeking him out to congratulate him. US Vice-President Kamala Harris also congratulated “India for the historic landing” in a post on X

Though frugality has always been the essence of India’s space sector, it was PM Narendra Modi who first drove the stunning contrast home when in 2014 he spoke of the Indian mars orbiter, Mangalyaan ($74 million), costing less than the Hollywood space flick ‘Gravity’ ($100 million). By that yardstick, Chandrayaan-3’s budget is less than that of the Indian film ‘Adipurush’ (Rs 700 crore) and Christopher Nolan’s science fiction ‘Interstellar’ (Rs 1,368 crore).

The average annual budget of US’ NASA is estimated at nearly $24 billion (Rs 2,400 crore) as against ISRO’s $1.5 billion (Rs 150 crore) — a 24-fold difference. Frugality has long been the hallmark of ISRO’s missions. While NASA’s maiden mars mission, Mariner 9, succeeded at a cost of Rs 1,029 crore in 1971, India’s maiden Mars Orbiter Mission — Mangalyaan — cost just Rs 450 crore. In 2014, India became the first country to put its mission in the martian orbit in the first attempt. India’s first lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 had cost less than Chandrayaan-3 at Rs 386 crore.

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