ISRO’s Nine Records and India’s Race to the Moon by 2040

The Indian Space Program is continuing to create new landmarks for itself on the global stage. As quoted in the speech of ISRO chairman V. Narayanan, India has already made nine world records in the area of space exploration and will soon make 8-10 more. It is all due to decades of efforts – starting from the discovery of water molecules on the Moon by Chandrayaan-1 in 2008 (confirmed later by NASA), then the successful mission to Mars, when the first attempt to launch was successful and India became the only country to reach the Red Planet on the first attempt, breaking the records in the launches of satellites and creating the fastest cryogenic engines. Now India has launched over 4,000 rockets and 133 satellites.

Looking into the future, ISRO aims for an even bigger feat: sending an Indian astronaut to the Moon by 2040. It is clear that this path – starting from a bare bones space agency decades ago to a country earning "firsts" despite the fact that many other countries have far greater wealth behind their space programs – has become something for India to be proud of, but more and more, to profit from as well.