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Early bird catches the worm. Well begun is half done. Pakistan has proven old-age sayings starkly wrong in space research. Its counterpart across the border has set new standards of science exploration. read more
 "Why India’s Isro flies high and Pakistan’s Suparco stutters despite early start")
While India's Isro continues to achieve groundbreaking milestone, Pakistan's Suparco fades out of space race. X
In the span of a few decades, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has become one of the most prominent space agencies in the world. From carrying rocket cones on bicycles and ferrying satellites on bullock carts to successfully sending an orbiter to Mars in the first attempt, Isro has come a long way. But there was a time when India was behind Pakistan in regard to space exploration.
Pakistan started its space programme back in the 1960s and established the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) in 1961, eight years before Isro even came into existence. After the USSR, Japan, and Israel, Pakistan became the 4th country in Asia to go into space.
However, things have changed since then. While Isro is conducting groundbreaking missions, Pakistan’s presence in the space race is fading away. When Firstpost’s Salam Series was in the making, questions regarding the current conditions of Suparco were also raised. During a conversation with Pakistani scientist and author Prof. Pervez Hoodbhoy, we discussed what are the factors that contributed to Suparco’s downfall.
As Pakistan celebrates its Independence Day on August 14 and Isro completes 55 years on August 15, 2024, here’s a look at how Isro and Suparco have fared over the years.
How the Space race between the US and the USSR helped Suparco
Interestingly the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union helped in the rise of Suparco. On October 4, 1957, the USSR successfully launched Sputnik I, a mission which is now touted as the “Dawn of the Space Age”. Sputnik I was the world’s first artificial satellite which was about the size of a beach ball and marked the start of the space race between the US and the USSR.
The success of the mission sent out two messages; the first was that the USSR did achieve the milestone before the US and the second was the fact that the mission opened doors for new possibilities. After the embarrassing defeat, Washington aimed to retain its space dominance.
While delivering an address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort, on September 12, 1962, then-US President John F Kennedy pledged to get a man on the moon before 1970 and bring him safely back to Earth. Even before the address, the US’s intention opened doors for the world in regard to space exploration. In the late 50s and early 60s, Washington was looking for partners near the Indian Ocean and Pakistan seized the opportunity.
“Suparco owed a lot to the Americans giving sounding rockets to explore the upper atmosphere and it was largely for their strategic objectives because in those days you see we didn’t have satellites and you wanted to know how air currents move at the top of the atmosphere,” Prof. Hoodbhoy told Firstpost.
“But it was good for Pakistan because they learned some basics of how to control rockets, how to prepare them,” he added.
The rise of Suparco
Pakistan owes a lot of its scientific achievements to the country’s first Nobel laureate Prof. Abdus Salam. Hoodbhoy emphasised that before Pakistan’s then-PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto announced that Ahmadis would not be considered Muslims (affected Salam a lot since he was an Ahmadiyya), Salam was the “most important person in Pakistan” in regards to the development of science and technology in the country.
“Salam was an adviser to then-President Ayub Khan. He was responsible for setting up the Pakistan Space Program, Suparco. He was responsible for advising the government on getting a reactor from Canada and installing it in Karachi. In agricultural research and in many different things, Pakistan couldn’t have found anybody better,” Prof. Hoodbhoy explained.
With his genius, Pakistan established SUPRARCO on 16 September 1961. The very next year, in June 1962, it launched Rahbar-1. The country which was struggling with its own economic woes managed to achieve the feat years before Isro was established.
Since then the space agency has been responsible for several other projects like suborbital flights and sounding rockets, the Launch of Badr Satellites on July 16, 1990, and Remote Sensing and Earth Observation (PRSS-1) in 2018. However, several factors contributed to its downfall. But before we get into it, let’s see how Pakistan’s Suparco gave incentive to India to accelerate its space endeavours.
The man behind Isro
It is safe to say that India was uncomfortable with the establishment of Suparco and the launch of Rahbar 1. The development of Pakistan’s science and space infrastructure was concerning for India because space and military technology developed hand in hand. India was worried that Pakistan could use the same technology in the development of missiles and other weaponry.
Hence, Suparco gave India the urgency to develop its own space agency. But before Suparco was established, a Parsi man already had the ambition to take India to space. This man was none other than Vikram Ambalal Sarabhai.
Sarabhai was born into a major wealthy industrialist family on August 12, 1919. His father, Ambalal Sarabhai was a major industrialist committed to the Indian independence movement. A prodigy in his own right, Sarabai had a degree from Cambridge and his doctoral advisor was none other than India’s Nobel Prize Winner CV Raman. Despite all the luxuries in life, Sarabhai wanted to stay in India and work towards taking India to space.
However, his dreams came at a time when the newly independent India was suffering from economic woes. Even when India was taking baby steps in this regard, local newspapers questioned the money (very little) which was being spent on these projects. “We need rice, not rockets,” read one of the newspaper headlines at that time.
From bullock cart to Mars: Isro became a powerhouse
It is pertinent to note that modern space research in India can be traced to the 1920s when scientist SK Mitra conducted a series of experiments sounding the ionosphere through ground-based radio in Kolkata. Scientists like CV Raman and Meghnad Saha contributed to scientific principles applicable to space sciences. However, it was Sarabhai and Homi Jehangir Bhabha who took India to space.
While setting up space infrastructure, Sarabhai built strong connections with scientists in the United States and France. Even India’s first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru was keen on setting up a strong scientific infrastructure. Keeping all this in mind, the Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR) was set up in 1962 by Nehru at the suggestion of Sarabhai.
Because of Sarabhai’s diplomatic efforts, the US provided an Apache rocket and France even gave payload for free. With this, India launched the Nike-Apache sounding rocket from the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station on November 21, 1963. Sarabhai’s ambition and persistence to fulfil the dream can be seen by the fact that a bullock cart was used to take the equipment to the launching station, a photograph of which still graces GK books.
Isro eventually succeeded INCOSPAR and was established on August 15, 1969, and since then the space agency has achieved a lot. In 1975, Isro conducted a Satellite Instructional Television Experiment or SITE and in 1982 it launched INSAT-1A, India’s first satellite communication system.
Today, India competes with NASA and the China National Space Administration (CNSA) when it comes to achieving milestones in space. Isro used the “leapfrogging method” and took the help of already developed technologies around the world for their scientific endeavours, instead of wasting time in developing technologies that already exist in the world.
So where did Suparco fail?
When asked this question to Prof. Hoodbhoy, he elucidated the factors that led to the downfall of the Pakistani space agency. “It was doing okay in the 1960s and it was sending up the sounding rockets and learning the essentials of rocketry but then Pakistan didn’t have a sound, strong scientific base. Its education system, particularly where science is concerned, is weak. There is no culture of science in the country,” he said.
“To your question, I think it is the base in physics and mathematics which in the case of India and China are very strong and in the case of Pakistan are very weak. That accounts for the difference in the levels of performance of Suparco and Isro,” he added.
Another factor that contributed to the issue was the fact that Pakistan was more interested in developing its military technology rather than space technology. While India and Pakistan were racing to develop nuclear weapons, Pakistan’s then-PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto said “We (Pakistan) will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own (atom bomb)… We have no other choice!” In his book titled “The Idea of Pakistan,” Stephen Cohen also mentioned that the Pakistani generals took leadership in Suparco relegating the scientists to the side.
How India and Pakistan treated Sarabhai and Salam, respectively, can also reflect why Pakistan continues to have a weak scientific infrastructure. While India lauded and respected the contributions of Sarabhai, Salam was relegated to the side because he was an Ahmadiyya. Salam loved his country, Sarabhai loved his country, but only one country loved its scientists back. Imagine the kind of development Pakistan would have witnessed if Salam’s vision had been fully implemented.
Sadly Pakistan still doesn’t have Indigenous satellite launching and producing technology and aims to build that by 2040. India can actually learn lessons by looking at the rise and fall of Suparco. The current condition of the Pakistani space agency makes one realise how important it is for the country to keep investing in research and development, to rely on its scientists and support them in their endeavours. Development in space research can also help in solving day-to-day problems, be it in agriculture or telephonic conversation.
Interestingly, one can also compare the Isro-Suparco space race to that of the US-USSR (the space race between the US and Russia after the fall of the USSR). One can learn that it’s not always about doing something first, persistence and consistency are the ingredients for success.
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English (US) ·