‘Will fly to Venus, Mars with pvt cos’
NEW DELHI : Private companies will be a major partner in India’s future space missions, including those to Mars and Venus, and India is not behind any world power, including China, in technical capability although the country needs to build scale, NITI Aayog member and defence scientist V.K. Saraswat said in an interview.
Saraswat said India’s effort is to capture a larger share of the global space economy and that its space missions have one key goal—unlocking access to critical minerals. According to information available from InvestIndia, a state agency facilitating investments, India’s space sector, which was at 2-3% or $9.6 billion of the global space economy in 2020 is set to reach up to 10% by 2030.
The new era of space—the unfolding of Space 4.0, which all nations want to be part of—offers a market, Saraswat said, adding that this justifies India’s efforts to capture at least 10% of that market. “I am quite certain that the future programmes India is planning to do, for example, the Gaganyaan (manned space mission), the mission to Venus and the mission to Mars will all certainly have a huge participation of the private sector by way of supply of sub-systems, components and devices, and also they may become joint partners in some of the major launches which are precursors to this," said Saraswat.
He also defended the government’s introduction of a licence regime for importing laptops, saying local production of laptops for domestic consumption and exports will offer gains to the economy compared to importing computers, which only benefits overseas exporters to India. The former chief of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) said with the completely indigenous Chandrayaan-3 landing on the south pole
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