NASA and ISRO, the difference between these space projects

First of all NASA is mostly an “administration” which manages all the space projects. The rockets and satellites are often made by vendors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northup Grumman etc. ISRO on the other hand currently manages and develops all rockets and the satellites in-house.

Till date:-

·        No. of 5 launched vehicles ISRO have. NASA has more than 5 rocket families namely Delta, Atlas, Titans, Ares, Scout along with Space shuttle and SLS

·        ISRO have launched vehicles having a capacity of no more than taking 5-8 ton satellite for a low-earth orbit. NASA has rockets as powerful to take 100 ton of payload in low-earth orbit (Saturn V)

·        ISRO has launched 120 satellites whereas NASA has launched 1500 satellites; more than 500 are operational right now. They include all kinds of satellites like communication, remote sensing, military etc.

·        GPS constellation NASA has is of around 24 satellites, which maps whole earth and is used globally. ISRO is in middle of creating its own navigation constellation IRNSS, having 7 satellites (mapping INDIA and its surroundings.)

·        Famous deep space missions by NASA which includes the Apollo (moon) missions, several Mars missions, Voyager I and II, missions to Venus, Jupiter and the recent Pluto. Several NASA satellites are orbiting Moon and Mars. ISRO has started its venture in deep space with two famous missions – Chandrayaan and Mangalayaan.

·        NASA currently has contribution in International Space Station (ISS), moreover has got Skylab. ISRO is yet to contribute in such projects or have one of its own.

·        NASA already sent man to moon, and every next day sends astronauts to low-earth orbit. ISRO is in the process of Human Space Missions. The difference is clearly seen or understood.

·        Aeronautics part of NASA deals with research in aviation and advanced aircrafts. ISRO doesn’t deals with any aeronautics research.

·        A proud fleet of rovers rolling down on Mars and Moon is controlled by NASA. ISRO is yet to land its rover on Moon with Chandrayaan –II mission.

·        NASA has its feet deep in space research from a while now and has telescopes and observatories in Earth’s orbit and beyond. Some famous ones are Hubble, Kepler, Fermi Gamma-ray telescope and WMAP. ISRO is again yet to launch its mini-Hubble “Astrosat.”

From this very few differences between NASA and ISRO can be spotted out but comparison of NASA and ISRO doesn’t makes any sense. NASA is funded by the DOD (Dept. of Defense) whereas ISRO is civilian. The military-industrial-space complex in USA is highly developed, whereas this doesn’t exists in India.

Lot more differences you can have a note of like:

While India launched its recent spacecraft to Mars was remarkable. It is the $75 million mission approach to time, money and materials that is getting worldwide attention.

Simultaneously just days after the launch of India’s Mangalyaan satellite, NASA sent off its own Mars mission, five years in the making, named Maven. Its cost: $671 million. The budget of India’s Mars mission, by contrast, was just three-quarters of the $100 million that Hollywood spent on last year’s space-based hit, “Gravity.”

“The mission is a triumph of low-cost Indian engineering,” said Roddam Narasimha, an aerospace scientist and a professor at Bangalore’s Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research.

“By excelling in getting so much out of so little, we are establishing ourselves as the MOST COST EFFECTIVE CENTRE globe wide for a variety of advanced technologies,” Narasimha said.

That is why so many multinationals have their research and design based in India, he said, with “some bigger than our national labs.”

India’s 3,000-pound Mars satellite carries five instruments that will measure methane gas, a signal that humans can exist on the planet. Maven weighs nearly twice but carries eight heavy-duty instruments which will investigate what went wrong in the Martian climate, which could have once supported life.

“Ours is a contrasting, inexpensive and innovative approach to the very complex mission,” said K. Radhakrishnan, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), in an interview at the space agency’s Bangalore headquarters. “Yet it is a technically well-conceived and designed mission,” he said.

Wealthier countries may have little incentive to pursue technological advances on the cheap, but not a populous, resource-starved country. So building things creatively and inexpensively has become a national strength.  So ISRO has learned to make cost-effectiveness a daily mantra.

The most obvious way ISRO does it is low-cost engineering talent; the same reason so many software firms use Indian engineers. India is developing and developing quickly. But it has a long way to go before it can compete with American technology. India is, though, not out of race! It still has highly skilled engineers who will be marked out for our development in future. Let’s just hope the best. New updates about the space world of India will be flourished soon with new achievements (hope so) and I will be glad to tell you about them in my next story.