By Sulagna Chattopadhyay
With the highest priority getting accorded to a manned mission plummeting to 6,000-m beneath the unchartered depths of the Indian Ocean, India’s Deep Ocean Mission unequivocally appears nicely on its way to glory. A Rs 4,000 crore allocation more than a 5 year period, as outlined in the FY22 Budget, would absolutely support innovate far better, carrying out away with the technological roadblocks that are holding back the nation’s brave hearts waiting to dive down.
India’s Deep Ocean Mission is of course more than just an underwater manned mission. As outlined in Report 332 of Parliamentary S&T Standing Committee (March-2020), the Deep Ocean Mission framework entails the inclusion of six broad elements. The initial outlines the improvement of technologies for underwater autos and robotics to help deep-sea mining. Some of the key sources ocean floors offer you are polymetallic nodules, cobalt-wealthy manganese crust, hydrothermal deposits and gas hydrates. Of these, only gas hydrates are identified in India’s exclusive financial zone (EEZ) in mineable quantities in the order of ~950 trillion cubic m.
The second includes ocean climate advisories that envisage to decide the extent ocean-atmosphere coupling influence the climate of the sub-continent. With the unprecedented warming of the oceanic waters, nuanced analysis and information management are needed. At present, oceanic information is managed by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) by way of its Digital Ocean and allied frameworks.
The third element involves analysis on deep-sea biodiversity, an region of work that has created tiny headway till now. The list of Deep Ocean Mission activities continues with deep ocean survey and exploration, power and freshwater from the ocean, with the establishment of an sophisticated marine biology station at Goa finishing the spectrum of envisaged exploits.
To ensconce 3 humans in a 4.1 m diameter titanium sphere with a comfy air stress of 1 atmosphere (atm) amidst 600 atm oceanic waters, India will now have to have to earnestly prepared itself. The manned expedition Samudrayan is a collaborative project across institutes-the stress capsule of Matsya 6000 getting created by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the intricate workings of the automobile by National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT). Likely to be certified by Norway’s DNV-GL, Matsya’s deepwater trials are to commence in 2024. This project’s results would catapult India into the ranks of US, Russia, France, Japan, and China. The budgetary outlay for the Deep Ocean Mission, pending for practically half a decade, locating sudden credence above quite a few other important issues in the existing context, probably does not bear any relation to China’s productive dive of 10,000 m into the Mariana Trench in the winter of 2020. The increasing crescendo of China’s deep-sea manned expedition, the initial of which was effectively commissioned way back in 2012, appears to be just a mere coincidence.
The Chennai-based NIOT in just 3 years considering that its establishment in 1993, devised a remotely operable deepwater crawler to test mine the seafloor at a depth of 410 m off the coast of India. The crawler was to discover 75,000 sq km seafloor allocated in the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB) by the International Sea Bed Authority (ISA), the United Nations in 1987 for polymetallic nodules. Consequent decades saw the addition of a collector, crusher and a versatile riser to pump polymetallic nodules to the surface-tested at a depth of 3,400 m in the Bay of Bengal as late as 2019.
Although the crawler is but to access the 5,50m seafloor in the CIOB in an indeterminate timeframe, getting abandoned on-web site a couple of occasions due to volatile sea situations, there are to NIOT’s credit two remotely operable autos that have observed operational results. The initial is the soil tester, the deepest ever Indian probe that moreover managed to relay photographs of the CIOB seafloor, and second is the Rosub 6000. The latter completed its field trials in the depths of CIOB way back in 2010 and helped gather samples of the polymetallic nodule and hydrothermal sulphides, apart from gas hydrates off India’s EEZ.
The allocation of Rs 4,000 crore against the needed Rs 6,687.5 crore, for the Deep Ocean Mission that was outlined by the ministry of earth sciences (MoES) final year is a welcome addition to up India’s analysis requires. Downsizing two components of the Mission, the Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) element, and the ocean climate advisory unit, the budgetary requirement for the Mission was honed to address the technological elements of deep-sea mining. Although the mission entails a sizeable enhancement of MoES’s profile, its intended have to have in this hour raises a couple of inquiries.
MoES’s argument that India is falling behind in ocean analysis and that nations such as the US and Japan are not pretty forthcoming in sharing their technologies rouses India’s drive to far better science. However, unconfirmed reports point towards the thwarting of Russia’s lowest technologies transfer bid about 5 years ago. For about Rs 350 crore the Russians have been prepared to share the know-how to allow manned missions, understanding from which would have not only saved India time but also its valuable sources.
Robotics and crawler deployment in the CIOB can support make India’s technical capacity to commercially mine polymetallic nodules in the future. With the CIOB getting granted for exploration for an initial 15 year period, followed by a 5-year extension ending in 2022 it is probably that as soon as ISA’s extensive draft exploitation regulations are formalised, India may perhaps get an chance to even mine the area. While there may perhaps be a extended pause prior to ISA challenges a mining license to India, the more readily out there gas hydrates inside the Krishna-Godavari basin below the Bay of Bengal, capable of generating India power safe, look to have been largely relegated to the background.
Scientists cite technological hurdles in gas hydrate extractions with their beds lying about 200 m beneath the seabed, not to mention that they see tiny function for themselves in a fuel-driven discourse. In reality, MoES has been distancing itself from the gas hydrate programme for more than a decade now, evident from the closure of the DST-MOES Indo-Russian gas hydrate centre way back in 2013 at NIOT. Although Russia (Lake Baikal area) and Japan (Nankai Trough seabed) have been in a position to produce fuel from the gas hydrate, India National Gas Hydrate Programme, below the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) is nonetheless at a nascent exploratory stage with only a fair degree of mapping to its credit. Despite an in depth deposit of gas hydrates in the Krishna-Godavari basin, the resource remains unlinked to the Deep Ocean Mission.
Amidst this technologies-driven Mission framework for prioritising mineral exploration by way of manned and unmanned robotics, stands the anomaly of establishing an sophisticated marine biology station at Goa. Reportedly situated in ONGC’s Cabo De Rama campus, the centre has even forged a collaboration with Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) France. The initial 3-year phase of the Mission beginning 2021 outlines the have to have to prepare a repository for deep-sea fauna DNA amongst 5 other activities. This dilution is baffling and mandates additional critique.
It is probably also critical to discover why the Deep Ocean Mission has not addressed the have to have for satellite deployment for India’s information buoys placed in international waters to study ocean parameters for climate research. As of now these buoys are uplinked to foreign satellites, such as the Advanced Research and Global Observation Satellite (ARGOS), Inmarsat and Iridium, and endure information compatibility challenges with buoys situated in the Indian waters and uplinked to ISRO’s INSAT.
In a paper published by NIOT scientists, crewed underwater autos are envisaged to make oceans habitable, with the quick spin-off of enabling tourism and ocean literacy. An Atlantis-Varuna ocean residency is enigmatic no doubt, but regardless of whether it will lead to realtime business and employment producing activities beyond analysis, remains in query.
Finally, all the Deep Ocean Mission appears to offer you is an amplification of all its former activities with the formal onboarding of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Pivoted by way of NIOT, the showstopper of the Mission is probably to be the Matsya 6000, offered the fund flow remains smooth.
Author is President, SaGHAA, a feel tank working on Polar challenges