How India Pulled Off Its Frugal Moon Landing

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earning revenues from launching satellites for other countries. Developing its own technology took time but ultimately allowed India to keep the costs of its in-house technology low, said Rajagopalan. ISRO also manages to achieve ambitious missions on a relatively small budget by keeping its goals contained, she said.

India’s 2014 mission to Mars, for example, kept the size of its payload—the scientific instruments it carried—small, which allowed for the use of a smaller rocket to put its spacecraft into Earth orbit, she said. That mission also cost about $70 million. In contrast, NASA’s mission to Mars that same year, called MAVEN, had much broader goals of carrying out extensive scientific observations and experiments.

“India was doing more of a technology demonstrator," Rajagopalan said. NASA’s mission to Mars, in comparison, was “much larger, much more complex." In the case of the moon mission, the Chandrayaan-3 lifted off with a smaller rocket than Russia’s Luna-25 and looped around the Earth several times, using Earth’s gravity to slingshot its way toward the moon, a journey that took nearly 40 days but saved fuel and money. India opened up its space sector to private firms in 2020 and last year saw a space startup launch the country’s first privately built rocket.

Eyeing the rise of U.S. space companies like SpaceX, which dominates the commercial satellite launch market, India’s government hopes the move will draw billions of dollars in funding toward private companies to add momentum to the government space program. Another place where India’s space program saves money is in salaries.