Indian equipment for China’s Tiangong space station faces export delay
- Equipment developed by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics to analyse interstellar gas has yet to receive an export licence
- A scientist who played a leading role in the project says political tensions have not helped the process and ‘for now, there’s not much we can do’
A team from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore applied for an export permit from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs for the Spectroscopic Investigations of Nebular Gas (Sing) device about a year ago.
However, the team has not heard of any progress since. “We completed everything two months ago. The instrument is now sitting in the clean room, ready to fly,” said project leader and astrophysicist Jayant Murthy.
“I’ve been told that our application is being processed, and that it has not been approved yet,” he said, adding that Sing was supposed to arrive in China last year to be launched in mid-2023, but had been delayed due to Covid.
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The Indian Ministry of External Affairs has not responded to a request for comment.
Sing was jointly selected by the China Manned Space Agency and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs to be one of nine international experiments carried out on board Tiangong.
As the first collaboration between India and China in space science, the US$50,000 instrument will be mounted on Tiangong to scan the sky in the ultraviolet waveband as it orbits the Earth, and help understand the composition and behaviour of interstellar gas, the birth and death of stars, and other scientific questions.
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Even though most of Sing’s components – including a telescope and a spectrograph – were developed by Murthy and his graduate students, things usually became sensitive when it came to space, and the tense relationship between India and China did not help, he said.
“I’ve tried to explain that our instrument would be pointing up towards the sky, and not looking down at the Earth at all, but that apparently did not work,” he said.
Other international experiments selected to fly on Tiangong, including ones being developed in Europe, were also facing export clearance problems, he said without giving more details.
If Sing can make its way to China this year, it is still likely be the first international payload to operate on the Chinese space station.
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Murthy said the opportunity was very important, partly because his students had invested so much time in the project, and partly because the launch cost would be covered by the China Manned Space Agency – which would otherwise be well beyond his budget limit.
The designed lifespan of Sing is between six months and a year. “Our data will be completely open, and we have no restrictions on anyone using it,” Murthy said.
“But for now, there’s not much we can do. We are still hopeful, though we understand the challenges.”
