'Strategic activity in future will be based on Moon,' says ISRO chief Somanath at Vibrant Gujarat Summit 2024

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman S Somanath on Thursday said that the country's premier space agency was looking at the Moon as a base as it will not only affect economically but also strategically. "We also look at the Moon as a base," Somanath said while speaking at the Vibrant Gujarat Summit 2024.

The ISRO chief, under whose watch India scripted cosmic history by successfully landing on the Moon last year, said continued human access to the Moon in the long term will have an economic impact. "When you look at human access to the Moon and continued access to the Moon in the long term, it also has an economic impact on our space activity," he said.

"For example, the strategic activity in the future will not be around the Earth alone, it will be around, sometimes, based on the Moon. Some of the people who are in that domain will understand it a little deeper," the space agency chief said.

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Space exploration has so far been dominated by only a handful of countries like the US, Russia, and China. However, escalating conflict among these nations on Earth has sparked fears that it might explode in the future and reach space. 

The Guardian reported in May last year that a senior US military official said America was ready for conflict in outer space to counter the threats posed by "provocative" countries such as Russia and China. Brig Gen Jesse Morehouse at US Space Command, which is responsible for space operations, said Russian aggression and China's vision to become the dominant space power by mid-century, had left the US with "no choice" but to prepare for orbital skirmishes.

In April last year, Gen Anil Chauhan, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), said there a possibility of a war in space because of the steady traffic towards weaponisation of space. He highlighted the intense race towards militarisation of space and said there was a need for developing dual-use platforms with a special focus on incorporating cutting-edge technology in the space domain.

"Space is a domain which is enhancing capabilities of other domains of land, sea, air and even cyber. The military application of space is the dominant discourse from which we cannot remain divorced," he said while speaking at the Indian DefSpace Symposium organised by Indian Space Association (ISpA).

Gen Chauhan flagged the anti-satellite tests carried out by Russia and China and stressed the need for India to build offensive and defensive capabilities in the space domain. "As far as India is concerned, the present and future challenges are that India should transit from space support to a space enhancement in the space domain," he said.

The CDS also said the invasion of the space domain by commercial enterprises, as seen during the Russia-Ukraine war by SpaceX and Maxar, had unfolded a new area in the war on convergence. 

"This combined with the intense race towards militarisation of space has resulted in the battlespace becoming expanded and the very nature of warfare is at a major cusp of transformation," he said.

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Somanath on PM Modi, Space Station

During his address in Gandhinagar, Somanath said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had been an ardent supporter of space programs ever since he was the chief minister of Gujarat. After the success of Chandrayaan-3, he said, the Prime Minister gave the scientists a vision that they must build a long-term plan for expanding space activity.

"What he (PM Modi) told us is that we must create continuous activity of humans' presence in space. Though we have a Gaganyaan program, it must continue over a long period leading up to a human landing on the Moon and an Indian landing on the moon by 2040. It looks far away, but it's not far away. It's so close. And we must build a space station by 2035, a space station that is accessible for Indians to go there and do research," the ISRO chief said.

The ISRO successfully landed Chandryaan-3 on the southern pole of the Moon on August 23, 2023.