A colleague once told us that his son was studying space science at the Institute of Space Technology in Islamabad.
When our colleague was asked if there was any scope in the field, he replied the most his son could do was teach the subject or at most join national space agency, Suparco.
There were not many fields where he could venture into with that degree. But, since he always wanted to study about space, he allowed his son to pursue the field.
The young student was right. There are not many avenues for someone who possesses a degree in space science in Pakistan, but in other parts of the world, a lot if work is being done in space science.
If we look around at countries around us, we would see that they have invested heavily in the field of space science.
Be it India or China, they have space programmes that can match those of the US and Russia.
As far as Pakistan is concerned, it still needs to work on it and see how far it can go.
However one positive thing that we have heard today is that a Pakistani satellite will be orbiting the moon as part of China’s Chang’e-6 lunar mission.
This would be the historic first for Pakistan. The mission was launched from Hainan in China, with an aim to explore the moon’s dark side. It will employ lunar research payloads from various countries, including Pakistan’s iCube Qamar satellite.
This satellite has been jointly designed by the Institute of Space Technology, Shanghai University (SJTU) and Pakistan’s national Suparco.
The lunar module is a cube satellite or CubeSat which carries two optical cameras to image the lunar surface. It will be aboard Chang’e-6 which will collect around 2kg of lunar samples from the far side of the Moon and bring them back to Earth for analysis.
This is indeed an achievement for Pakistan. There is a need to move forward in the field, and invest in it. The government should allocate funds for this sector and students should be encouraged to pursue the field. There is a need to diversity and adopt fields that require manpower. Space science is the field of the future and it would not be long before a need would arise for professionals in this field.
Pakistan needs to take its space programme to another level.
