Why is the moon landing important for India?

How a soft landing on the moon in 2023 could help India make billions of dollars soon...

Transcript

00:00India's successful moon landing is not just a great scientific achievement, but also a

00:05sound decision that can help the country make billions of dollars.

00:19The year was 1957.

00:22Later Americans heard a strange beeping sound on their radios.

00:30It was the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik, launched by the Soviet Union.

00:48And barely a month later, the USSR's second satellite, Sputnik 2, also went up.

00:54This one was carrying a dog named Laika.

01:08Sputnik was launched just over a decade after the end of World War II, and in the middle

01:12of the Cold War between the US and the former Soviet Union.

01:16The satellite sparked what is today known as the space race.

01:32On 20th July 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon.

01:46Armstrong's Apollo 11 reached the moon in just 4 days.

01:50Russia's Lunar 25, which crashed into the moon a few days before Chandrayaan 3's landing,

01:56had also been estimated to reach the moon in about 2 weeks.

02:00But India's Chandrayaan 3 took more than 40 days to reach the moon.

02:04Instead of flying straight towards the moon, Chandrayaan 3 used both the Earth and the

02:08moon's gravity to its advantage.

02:10It used short bursts of power to increase its speed in increasing orbits around the

02:16Earth.

02:17This way, we can put mass in less fuel.

02:23Isro's Chandrayaan 3 budget was about $74 million.

02:28In comparison, NASA was expected to spend about $93 billion on its Artemis moon program

02:34by 2025.

02:36And China, which first soft-landed on the moon in 2013, is estimated to have spent $12

02:42billion on its space program in 2022.

02:50India became the first country to make a soft landing near the moon's south pole.

02:54It was also the fourth country to land on the moon after Russia, the US and China, and

02:59they did it on a shoestring budget.

03:01Chandrayaan 3's success didn't just help India save money, but could also help the

03:06country make money.

03:08The hope is that within a few decades, thousands of humans could be living on the moon.

03:13With a successful soft landing under its belt, India could not only make significant scientific

03:17advancements but also likely become one of the country's controlling aspects of this

03:22moon economy like transportation, data commercialization and utilization of lunar resources.

03:28PwC released a report which studied the lunar market across different countries, analyzed

03:33both government and private data, and predicted a roadmap for the future.

03:38It said that the US would likely control the lion's share, 51%, of this lunar economy between

03:432020 and 2040.

03:45China, Japan and other Asian countries would control about 30% of it, and the European

03:50Union and other countries including India would come in at 18%.

03:55So India could make anywhere up to $231 billion off of this moon landing in the coming decades.