The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
Sometimes major events completely disconnected may be data points for the plans of the different powers around the world. The challenge is to discern what purpose they serve? More critically, what are we moving towards?
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) or Mangalyaan will go down in the history of space journeys as the most daring, innovative and mind-boggling undertaking. After Roscosmos, NASA, and the European Space Agency, ISO was the fourth agency to achieve this mission of reaching Mars and that too on the first attempt.
On November 5, 2013 the probe lifted off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket C25. It entered the Mars orbit on 24 September 2014 after a 298 days journey!
Because ISRO used in-house technology, simpler yet innovative design, it was able to achieve the whole project at a cost of ₹450 Crore (US$73 million). Just to get a context – the Hollywood movies about space cost more. For example Interstellar cost $165 million, Gravity’s budget was $100 mn, “The Martian”‘s cost was $108 mn!
This rover that orbits Mars will come very close to the surface of the planet and capture some amazing scenes and information from there.
During your orbit’s closest approach, some 300 kilometers above the surface, we may drift over Olympus Mons, three times higher than the Himalayas’ Mount Everest, or Valles Marineris, a canyon longer than India itself that cuts up to four miles into the red planet’s surface. Then we’ll swoop out to the farthest point of your elliptical orbit, some 71,000 kilometers away. From this distance, you are in a unique position to capture Mars as a full globe—the planet resembles a cup of tea we share, a touch milky where clouds have gathered, resting upon a sugar-sprinkled black tablecloth. (source)
This amazing work of science shown below will do what no human mission has been able to do in space at that cost and effort. And in that lies the story of India’s innovation!
By Indian Space Research Organisation, 2013. Mars Orbiter Mission Spacecraft (GODL-India), GODL-India, (source)
How we have a movie to celebrate this achievement.
The Movie
Mission Mars is a short film dedicated to India’s most inspiring story of progress. When Mangalyaan entered the Mars orbit on September 24, 2014, India made history when in the arena of interplanetary space. This movie sponsored by Johnnie Walker, directed by Imran Khan includes a small but stellar cast and crew comprising Imran Khan, Karan Johar, Punit Malhotra, Prakash Belawadi, Abhishek Saha and Sonali Sachdev.
The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
This visit of India left me with many questions. Many observations and inputs from different people and sections. Food for thought that I have tried to contemplate on and make sense of. Sharing all that with you.
When you analyze the last 60 years of the economic miracles of Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia versus the continued impoverished Indian economy, you get very interesting lessons. Can Indians have the wherewithal in them to do in one generation so that the coming generations may rise?
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