India's Chandrayaan-3 Lunar Mission Step in Space Age

The era of space mining is quickly approaching

Hey Everyone,

I have been following the space news more closely of late. Revelations about the Moon, that NASA was withholding from public knowledge is striking. Now it appears countries like China and India will push for more missions to the moon. Mining the Helium-3 and possibly even water there would be exceedingly profitable.

Scientists have known that Helium-3 exists on the moon for decades; in 1986 they estimated there could be around one million tons of it stored in lunar soil. Chinese researchers were the first ones to determine the concentration of Helium-3 in lunar samples as well as its extraction parameters.

Helium-3 is a stable, non-radioactive isotope, and scientists have considered that it could be used as a fuel in future nuclear fusion reactors since it would not produce dangerous waste products—one of the drawbacks of existing nuclear fission plants. I believe the race for this Helium-3 on the Moon will be what ushers in the Space-race.

India’s moon landing made history at a low cost

India’s recent unmanned mission shows just how economic space missions can be. It managed to land its Chandrayaan-3 mission safely on the moon’s unexplored south pole on August 23rd, 2023. The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft launched last month and touched down on the lunar surface around 8:34 a.m. ET.

The feat makes India the fourth country – after the then-Soviet Union, the U.S. and China – to land on the moon, and the first to land on one of the moon’s lunar poles.

The error rate for such a mission is fairly high. McDowell’s database showcases the monumental challenge undertaken by the 50 attempts to land on the moon, with a cheeky scoreboard that reads: Earthlings 23, Gravity 27.

We still aren’t putting much of our budgets into Space. Overall, NASA’s annual budget dwarfs that of its Indian counterpart. In 2023, the U.S. agency received $25.4 billion in funding, compared to the ISRO’s (India) budget of about $1.6 billion.

As a percentage of gross domestic product, the U.S. spends the most on space — although it still amounts to just 0.28% of GDP.  That ranks well ahead of India’s 0.04% of GDP, according to a July report on the global space economy by the Space Foundation.

The mission began more than a month ago at an estimated cost of $75 million. The actual cost with delays was likely a bit higher.

• For the next two weeks, Pragryan, a 57-pound rover carried aboard the Vikram, will patrol the Moon's south pole, gathering data on the mysterious region's geology.

• Meanwhile, the Vikram will use its instruments to gather other crucial surface data, including measurements of seismic activity and surface temperatures.

We are slowly Getting Better at Space Missions

The lure of Helium-3