On August 23, the Indian Space Research Organisation successfully landed its Chandrayaan-3 mission on the lunar south pole. This successful touchdown was celebrated across the world as it remains the first space probe to land on the south pole, thereby making India the fourth nation to reach the lunar surface.
However, India achieved this great milestone for humanity with only a relatively small budget of 6 billion rupees ($75 million). Scientists outlined that this budget is relatively low when compared to the $165 Million budget of Interstellar sci-fi movies.
Why India’s Chandrayaan-3 Mission is Cheaper than Interstellar Movie Budget
India is one of the top nations hoping to conduct scientific exploration of the lunar south pole because of its abundant natural resources. NASA, ESA, CNSA, ROSCOSMOS, JAXA, and other space agencies are also developing futuristic technologies for future robotic and crewed exploration of the lunar south pole. However, India recently put robotic boots on the terrains of the South Pole at only a low budget. The ISRO was able to achieve this milestone as it worked in every stage of the mission to cut costs.
On the other hand, Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi epic ‘Interstellar’ cost $165 million because of the cast, scenes, and technologies deployed to achieve the success of the movie. Even other great sci-fi movies like Gravity and Martian cost about $100 Million to make.
Hence, India has impressively proven that we can still achieve a space exploration goal at a lesser amount than it takes to produce Hollywood blockbuster sci-fi movies about the Universe.
What Scientists Think About This Comparison
Comparing this mission to the $4 Billion budget of NASA’s Artemis 1 mission that the agency completed last year, scientists revealed that the Chandrayaan-3 mission is still way cheaper. However, the budget of the Chandrayaan-3 mission is comparable with the $67 Million cost of launching SpaceX Falcon 9 to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) around our home planet.
Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX praised ISRO for successfully landing in the lunar south pole at such a low budget. When X (formerly known as Twitter) user Newthink compared the budgets of the Chandrayaan-3 mission and the blockbuster sci-fi epic movie Interstellar on the platform, Musk replied to the post by writing “Good for India!”
Indeed, India has proven that space travel can become cheaper and more affordable for companies and individuals in the future. While creating the budget for the Chandrayaan-3 mission, ISRO made it cheaper than the Chandrayaan-2 mission which cost about 8 billion rupees (roughly $97 million). Even though the Chandrayaan-2 lander and rover crashed into the lunar surface, its orbiter is still active around the moon and has remained useful for data transmission during the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
Next Move of Chandrayaan-3 Mission
After the successful touchdown of the Chandrayaan lander on August 23, its Pragyan rover rolled out of the Chandrayaan-3 Virkam lander on Aug. 24 to commence a start to the 14-day lunar mission. ISRO announced that Pragyan and Virkam will conduct several experiments and will also study the mission’s landing region to search for signs of ice water.
ISRO posted on Twitter that “the Rover has successfully traversed a distance of about 8 meters” and that “all payloads on the propulsion module, lander module, and rover are performing nominally.”
We should be expecting enriched data from the Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover before they finally run out of power on the next lunar night.
Conclusion
People have compared the budget of the Chandrayaan-3 mission to the Hollywood blockbuster sci-fi movie, Interstellar. This comparison shows that India’s recent lunar lander is quite cheaper than top Hollywood space movies. What do you think about this comparison?
