M4L1: Astrophysics-I

Astronomy. As the name suggests, it is about gazing the skies. But if the sky becomes an instrument to measure the hour of the day, or the season of the year? Mankind has always looked upon the sky to know the mysteries it unlocks.

Even during paleolithic age, when man saw the stars, he must have thought, what are they made up of. As time advanced, they started locating them in the skies in a way, that could help him to guide himself back to his home. Slowly, he started using the stars when he learnt travelling on water. And then, he gained the confidence that the moon is not a God. The thing, he worshipped is no more a divine figure. It is a dusty celestial object on which he can also dominate…

In order to do this, he started studying the path upon which the moon travels around the earth. He started putting them into orbits, just as we compartmentalize things in our bed room for easy remembering and access.

What are those orbits?  

1.    Low earth orbit

2.    Medium earth orbit

3.    Upper earth orbit

While, he wants to touch the heavens, he feels someone else is also trying to communicate with him. To answer them, he made telescopes.

These telescopes were first put on land. And then he put them in space. Why? Because, he wants to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

In order to confine the sounds and the light that reaches him from the distant parts of the universe, he built telescopes. Initially, they were very small. Later on, as technology advanced, he made them bigger and larger.

The largest among these telescopes, is now located in China. It is known as Five Hundred Meter Aperture Telescope (FAST) and it belongs to the category of single optic telescope.

On the other side, the Americans have also built, one of the largest single optic- steerable telescope. It is known as Green Bank Telescope (refer, image (2)). It is operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).

Apart from this, the United States has also contributed a Very Large Array (VLA) telescope farm, located in Magdalena site of New Mexico (refer image (3))

Image (1): Single optic telescope, Puerto Rico

Image (2): Green Bank Telescope

Image (3): Very Large Array telescope farm

So, what’ is so much interesting about it? A commerce student would ask, why should the country invest in such projects when the same amount of money can be used to build hospitals, to build universities and other social welfare programs?

To answer this, let us recall the details, we learnt in the previous module.

When the country launches these kinds of projects, it creates a demand for extremely advanced level of manufacturing. We will study this with an example.

During your school life, you must have done this experiment. We were taught that we can make a paper catch fire by focusing all the sunlight on it using an convex lens or a magnifying glass. Now how does it work?

But wait. In this case, the light that you want to focus is visible and Infrared. And the telescope uses spherical mirrors. Right?

When we want to focus, the bands of electromagnetic spectrum that have higher energies, the focal length increases. So, in order to make a telescope, that can focus more energetic bands, it will need a larger size of the tube.

So, what is the solution to this? In the earlier case, the mirrors are parallel and linear. To reduce the focal length, the engineers then came out with off axis aspherical mirrors that are adjusted in a curved shell, as shown below. The first set of these mirrors are paraboloid and the second set of mirrors are hyperboloid

Now such mirrors can be used in telescopes, microscopes, photography and imaging, lasers, satellite dishes, holography etc. Can this help to advance precision imaging, that is done via drones and satellites? Can it be used for autozoom in our DSLR cameras? 

So, what does this mean for us? When countries invest in such projects, it actually creates a demand for out of the box technologies. This creates a pull effect for the new technologies to arrive in the market. Far more important is the fact that this R&D can happen at any place. But when, this leads to a breakthrough in technology, the commercialization and technology transfer from public sector to private sector is equally important. This requires a very network of institutions that play a role for the same.

National Research Development Corporation (NRDC) was established in 1953 by the Government of India, with the primary objective to promote, develop and commercialize the technologies / know-how / inventions / patents / processes emanating from various national R&D institutions / Universities and is presently working under the administrative control of the Dept. of Scientific & Industrial Research, Ministry of Science & Technology. Due to extraordinary performance of the Nehru parivar, it never took off from the run-away.

On March 17, 2019, its website was showing the following notice, '‘The account has been suspended’ (Tauba Tauba Tauba)

Accelerating Growth of New India’s Innovations or AGNIi is a national initiative of the Government of India under the guidance and support of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India. It is an initiative that aims to support the ongoing efforts to boost the innovation ecosystem in the country by connecting innovators across industry, individuals and the grassroots to the market and helping commercialise their innovative solutions. It will provide a platform for innovators to bring their market ready products and solutions to industry thereby helping propel India into a new era of inclusive economic growth. AGNIi is spearheaded by a dedicated team under the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India. By providing a platform for innovators to scale up their market ready products, AGNIi will help propel India into a new era of inclusive socio-economic growth.

The government of India has launched multiple mechanisms for the diffusion of technology among startups and MSMEs. Few big-ticket projects include offset mechanism and local content requirements in Rafale deal, bullet train project, LIGO, Neutrino, Hyperloop etc. However, as mentioned earlier, while technology is important, the most important thing is the diffusion of this knowledge that lies at the core of the technology at domestic and grassroots level.

How does Space sector promote investment in Strategic technologies and advanced manufacturing technologies? 

Well this was specifically about Space sector. So, obviously, now you must have realized how, investments in the space sector help to promote Make in India program.  But the story does not end here. Can you think about Uber, Ola, Swiggy, Zomato and other companies providing you services without GPS? Their entire business model is based on satellite services. Or think about Navigation services or Google Earth or Satellite based broadband.

Do you know? After the 2004 Olympics, the USA based sports company ‘Speedo’ asked NASA to help design a swimsuit with reduced drag. NASA developed a swim suit that helped to reduce drag (friction) by 25% compared to usual swim suits. They named it Speedo LZR Racer suit. Within a year of its release in early 2008, the LZR Racer achieved worldwide fame as the most successful swimsuit ever made. Within a month, athletes wearing the suit broke 13 world records. And at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, 98 percent of medal-winners in swimming competitions won while wearing an LZR Racer. Out of the 25 world records broken at that Olympics, 23 were accomplished by swimmers wearing the suit. One among them was Michael Phelps, the famous American swimmer who won six gold medals and two bronze in that year.

This means, that Space sector creates multiple back-end and fore-end linkages with other sectors in the economy. Where else can we use it? The OECD handbook of measuring the space economy lists the following sector getting benefits due to space sector

1.    Information services

2.    Manufacturing

3.    Real estate and rental and leasing

4.    Finance and insurance

5.    Wholesale trade

6.    Professional, scientific and technical Services

7.    Health care and social assistance

8.    Retail trade

9.    Transportation and warehousing

10. Management of companies

11. Administrative and waste management

12. services

13. Arts, entertainment and recreation

14. Utilities

15. Agriculture, forestry, fishing and

16. Hunting

17. Educational services

18. Mining

19. Construction

20. Accommodation and food services

So, what advantages do we get by investment in space sector?

New jobs	Workforce in the space sector Employment locally, regionally serving the space sector workforce (e.g. local shops, industries). Employment in companies, organizations, using space-related products or services to create new products or services (e.g. imagery in geospatial equipment, satellite signals in Navigation equipment).
New revenues	Revenues coming from new services, based on space-based elements (telecommunications, Navigation, geospatial services).
Efficiency	Increased competitiveness of some space firms
Productivity	gains achieved by improving space assets users’ production and distribution.
Cost avoidance	Cost savings due to Reduced damage to properties and lives.
Social inclusion	Satellite communications infrastructure projects contribute to addressing the problem of social exclusion by improving accessibility.

So, when ISRO launches a satellite to Mars or launches 104 satellites in one shot, don’t just think that the scientists have gone crazy and they pumping our hard-earned money into space sector. Such missions only act as a platform to check the efficiency of sophisticated technologies, that can be later on used in other sectors of the economy.

“I would say 85% of our mission is for technology demonstration” K. Radhakrishnan, Chairman of ISRO

In USA, agencies like Space X, Blue origin, Shepherd etc. are private. In India we have only one agency called ISRO. And that too is a public funded organization. Should India invite private investments in Space sector under Make in India program?