When Indian space agency scientists set out to design the Chandrayaan-3 moon mission, they knew they had one more chance to make history with a landing on the lunar south pole after a failed attempt four years ago.
They also had to do it on a shoestring budget and ended up spending only Rs6.15bn or about $75 million on the mission.
From managing costs on rockets to developing a built-in-India supply base, the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) success with the Chandrayaan-3 moon landing shows how it has honed a system of doing more for less, officials, suppliers and analysts say.
ISRO’s record for frugal innovation will be tested by upcoming missions, including a project to study the sun set to launch next month and a plan to put astronauts in orbit.
Although India’s government allocated the equivalent of $1.66bn for the department of space for the fiscal year ending in March, it spent around 25% less. The budget for the current fiscal year is $1.52bn.
By contrast, Nasa has a $25 billion budget for the current year. Put another way, the annual increase in Nasa’s budget – $1.3bn – was more than what ISRO spent in total.
“No one in the world can do it like we do,” said S Somanath, ISRO chairman and a veteran aerospace engineer, who was celebrating Chandrayaan’s successful touchdown on Wednesday.
“I won’t disclose all secrets, otherwise everyone else (can) become cost effective,” he said at a news conference.
One example of how ISRO contained costs on Chandrayaan-3: it opted to take a longer route to the moon, allowing it to use less powerful – and cheaper – propulsion systems.
Chandrayaan-3 took more than 40 days to reach the moon, looping through widening orbits to use the Earth’s gravitational force as a slingshot.
By contrast, Russia’s Luna-25 mission, which crashed before its own attempted landing on the moon’s south pole, had been on a more direct course to the moon. Russia has not disclosed what it spent on the failed mission.
“To take a direct route takes more power, more fuel, and is far more expensive,” said Somak Raychaudhury, an astrophysicist and vice chancellor of Ashoka University.
ISRO also developed some of the lander components itself, including the cameras, altimeter and hazard avoidance sensors. It used Indian suppliers for vehicle assembly, transportation and electronics to keep costs low. And it limited the number of design prototypes to save time and money. “With local sourcing of equipment and design elements, we are able reduce the price considerably. A similar set up by an international vendor would cost four to five times,” Amit Sharma, CEO of Tata Consulting Engineers, which was a vendor to ISRO for the Chandrayaan-3 project, said.
Many of the ISRO scientists who worked on the failed Chandrayaan-2 attempt to land on the lunar south pole in 2019 stayed on for the current mission.
ISRO is gearing up to launch the Aditya-L1 spacecraft, a space-based solar observatory, in September. It has plans to send astronauts to space in a mission ISRO’s Somanath has said could come by 2025.
ISRO’s success is also expected to provide a lift for the country’s private-sector space start-ups at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is looking to open the sector to foreign investment, suppliers say.
Ankit Patel, founder and director of Ankit Fasteners, which has been supplying nuts, bolts and other fasteners to ISRO since 1994, said there were times when parts had to be hand carried to a launchpad to meet a deadline.
“The unsung heroes of ISRO are the engineers who are pushing their suppliers every day to achieve the set timeline,” Patel said.
He added: “ISRO has been very frugal with its expenditure. ISRO needs to think out of the box to stretch every rupee.”

Chandrayaan-3 rover rolls onto moon’s surface
New Delhi: The moon rover of India’s Chandrayaan-3 exited the spacecraft yesterday to begin exploring the surface of the lunar south pole and conducting experiments, and was braced for new challenges, the space agency chief said.
The spacecraft landed on the unexplored south pole of the moon on Wednesday, making India the first country to achieve this feat just days after Russia’s Luna-25 failed in a similar mission.
The soft, textbook touchdown by the lander after a failed attempt in 2019 sparked widespread jubilation and celebration in the world’s most populous country. The media hailed the historic landing as India’s biggest scientific feat.
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief S Somanath said the lander and the rover were in good condition, and “both are working very well” but the experiments were yet to start.
The rover, named “Pragyan”, has two instruments to conduct element and chemical composition experiments, and a robotic path planning exercise for future exploration. Chandrayaan means “moon vehicle” in Hindi and Sanskrit. The rover is expected to remain functional for two weeks, or one lunar day, the period of time its solar-powered equipment is built to last.
Somanath said there were “many issues” on the moon’s surface that the ISRO will experience for the first time, especially lunar dust and temperatures that could impact moving parts.
“The mechanisms, the moving items...can get entangled with the dust there. It can get into the moving parts and jam them, the bearings of the system may not work, the motors may not work,” he told the CNN News 18 TV channel.
Lunar dust is different from that on the surface of earth and in the absence of air on the moon, it could stick to materials of the rover, impacting its operation, he said.
“All this creates problems in those mechanisms...so let us see how it goes,” the scientist said. “We will face it...that’s why we are exploring. If everything is known, what is the fun in doing it?” (Reuters)