ESA to provide ground station communications support for India’s manned Gaganyaan missions
The new colonial movement: The European Space Agency (ESA) has now signed an agreement with India’s space agency ISRO whereby ESA will provide ground station communications support for India’s manned Gaganyaan missions.
The first unmanned test flights are planned for next year, with the first manned Gaganyaan mission targeting 2026.
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The new colonial movement: The European Space Agency (ESA) has now signed an agreement with India’s space agency ISRO whereby ESA will provide ground station communications support for India’s manned Gaganyaan missions.
The first unmanned test flights are planned for next year, with the first manned Gaganyaan mission targeting 2026.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
This is a good deal on India’s part.
It could also presage other forms of cooperation between India and Europe as the two have broadly complementary space programs. With Gaganyaan, India will have manned spaceflight capability years before Europe could – if, indeed, it ever decides to develop any such. But Europe does have a more powerful launch vehicle – Ariane 6 – than anything the Indians have now or might have sooner than roughly a decade hence. And the Indians intend to build a LEO space station while Europe has built, and continues to build, space station modules only for others and not – thus far — for itself. Europe also has companies that intend to field space station cargo resupply vehicles with downmass capability relatively soon. By throwing in together, ISRO and ESA could build a bigger and flossier LEO space station sooner than either could do so on its own and would also, in combination have all the ancillaries needed to operate it.
This also gives India more consistent access to their crews. I was fascinated to read about the early Russian / US partnership on Mir as they prepared to build the ISS and how due to the stations construction they only had comms while it passed certain points in the US and Russia via Ham Radio.
India having ground station relay in Europe will give them much longer communication windows than if they just had communications when passing over India.
I am wondering however, if StarLink won’t soon be leveraged by space agencies around the world as an existing low latency / high bandwidth communications channel with radios to ground stations being more of a backup system.
Your point about Starlink is a good one. But one should never count overmuch on the obviousness and goodness of an idea to carry the day when governments are involved.