Lift the veil, abandon Soviet-era approach. Indian science community wants ISRO to up its PR game
He is part of a digital war. The aim is to awaken the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) from its 55-year-old slumber by demanding better public outreach and engagement by the space agency around its space missions and technology development.
New Delhi: A science communicator and space enthusiast on social media under the pseudonym 'Gareeb Scientist' sat determined behind his keyboard Tuesday. As soon as the clock struck one, he hit enter on a flurry of posts on X, with the hashtag, 'ISROfixyourPR'.
The Indian science community is currently waging a war against the veil around ISRO-supported operations, fighting with memes, personal anecdotes and a carefully crafted list of its work, which has remained hidden from public discourse.
Many Indian social media accounts, which dedicatedly post space updates from ISRO, said the campaign started with the aim to highlight the lack of PR from the space agency. The issue also extended to big-ticket missions, such as the recent partnership between ISRO and US-based Axiom Space to jointly send Indian Air Force group captain Shubhanshu Shukla to the International Space Station (ISS).
Experts said that the visibility of ISRO missions had improved over the last decade. However, they added, the burden of information dissemination remained limited to media houses and independent science communicators, who often obtained information outside of official statements.
Radha Krishna Kavuluru, a space technology expert and former ISRO scientist, said ISRO, in the coming years, would conduct some inspiring missions that could inspire an entire generation of future space scientists.
Kavuluru said that maximum public engagement would ensure that the public had an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of ISRO while they witnessed the indigenous scientific advancements.
'Keeping everything behind walls is a tradition of the Soviets. I am sure we are well past that age. Time to inspire and talk the walk,' Kavuluru told ThePrint.
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Silence around recent missions
On 25 June, IAF group captain Shubhanshu Shukla kicked off his journey to the ISS as a member of the US-run Axiom-4 mission. He became the first Indian to set foot on the ISS, and after Rakesh Sharma, the second Indian to travel to space.
However, the buzz around the mission was limited to newspaper front pages and TV screens. The official social media pages of ISRO stayed content with reposting updates from the Union Minister of Science and Technology, Jitendra Singh.
Between the 1 June Axiom-4 launch and its 15 July return to Earth, ISRO made 24 posts on its X account about the Axiom-4 mission, including 19 reposts of posts by the science minister, the Prime Minister's Office, or the Public Information Bureau. The remaining five posts on the ISRO X account informed about the multiple postponements of the launch and the technical faults that SpaceX's Falcon-9 rocket experienced.
In the same period, NASA, through its various X handles, did a run-up to the launch with at least one post per day, while reposting engagement posts by Axiom Space and SpaceX. The US space agency, in partnership with Axiom Space, organised interaction sessions with the astronauts and released not only individual profile films for each but also infographics for the rocket launch and space capsule travel trajectory, among other actions.
More recently, updates on missions, such as the demonstration of the advanced technology behind rendezvous, docking, and undocking of a spacecraft in space—SpaDeX—and the upcoming one-of-a-kind NASA-ISRO SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) Mission or NISAR, a joint Earth observation mission, have been few and far in between.
On Monday, during the announcement of the NISAR launch date, ISRO's PR was limited to a post on X, as NASA held a formal press conference led by the team that will undertake the mission from the US space agency's end. The team members answered all media questions on all aspects of the mission. However, ISRO was not part of the press conference.
Vikranth Jonna, a 22-year-old engineer with Hyderabad-based space tech startup Dhruva Space, listed the 'crazy cool' work ISRO has done for the mission. 'ISRO is currently building methalox engines, quantum communications, human spaceflight, reusable rockets, two landers to the Moon, a mission to Venus and a lander to Mars,' Jonna said.
'Give us more opportunities to appreciate our scientists and engineers. Show us your glory,' he added.
ISRO refused to respond to ThePrint's request for a response to the ongoing social media campaign. A senior scientist confirmed to ThePrint that ISRO had 'gotten better' in its PR game but accepted that compared to its counterparts, such as NASA or European Space Agency (ESA), there is a long way to go.
'Of course, there is always room for improvement. But you need to acknowledge that the space sector in India has only started opening up, and some projects still need to operate with secrecy,' the scientist said.
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Global competition
From photos of astronauts working on the ISS and open-source data from active satellites to an easy-to-understand space glossary, the space PR game of NASA and its laboratories is top-class.
Apart from its active presence, all over social media, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and X, NASA has also been engaging with the general public through its programmes, such as the 'Get involved with NASA', where they invite members of the public to contribute their time and expertise to advancing research and solving problems, as well as potentially winning prizes as a result of their work.
Its 'Citizen Science' project is open to the public all over the world and aims to collaborate with volunteers to promote discoveries.
'More than 450 NASA citizen scientists have been [so far] named as co-authors on refereed scientific publications,' the NASA website reads.
Over the last few years, the ESA, China National Space Administration and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency have also caught on. The agencies realised the global space domain was not only about what happened inside the laboratories, but that a significant portion of their space programme success also depended on how they presented themselves. For instance, the Japanese agency has been organising open houses, town meetings and laboratory tours to help promote the work happening at those sites.
Mobilising interest in space
When his 16-year-old nephew asked Kavuluru where he could find the link to a documentary on the ISRO Astrosat and Aditya-L1 missions—something on the lines of NASA's 'Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey' and 'Apollo-11'—the former ISRO scientist was hit with a sensation of embarrassment.
'He wanted to study how ISRO does deep space missions. I had no response because no such documentaries exist … Why is this the case? When we have done such complex missions and are observing the Sun and the stars, shouldn't Indian students have the luxury to observe them too?' Kavuluru asked.
While ISRO missions remain under the shadows of mystery, the movie, as well as the OTT industry, has so far been cashing in on the public appetite for India's space success story. The Indian audiences have accepted 'Mission Mangal', 'Rocket Boys', 'Rocketry—The Nambi Effect', and 'Mission over Mars' with rave reviews. Be it Akshay Kumar portraying space pioneer Rakesh Dhawan, or R. Madhavan acting as senior scientist Nambi Narayanan—they have happily lapped it all up, with a feeling of pride.
Now, they need an opportunity to applaud their real heroes.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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