Q: Isro is gearing up to launch Aditya L1 Sun mission and its maiden Gaganyaan human flight mission in a year or two. How do you see these efforts?





Q:You threw your weight behind India when Vikram lander made a hard landing as you had said “people learn from their mistakes”. How do you rate the Chandrayaan-2 mission?





Q: Do you think Nasa and Isro can achieve wonders if they launch joint programmes to outer space and inter-planetary missions?





Q: Nasa is going to launch its Artemis programme by 2024 which will attempt to send humans to the Moon. What is the need of this mission?





Q: What is the future of private companies that are contributing immensely in upcoming space programmes?





Q: Are space startups in India getting the right platform? What should the Indian government do?





Q: What is your opinion on black holes and wormholes? Do you think it is possible to travel through wormholes, as depicted in the movie Interstellar?





Q: What is your opinion about Nat Geo 's new series “Cosmos: Possible Worlds”?





Q: In an upcoming episode of Nat Geo’s Cosmos: Possible Worlds, a possibility where “Earth will no longer be a home for humans” is being depicted.





A: Keep going. Don’t stop. Exploration may be a fundamental part of human DNA. But not everyone gets to do it. Not everyone has the wisdom to know why. Not everyone has access to resources to make it happen. But when you do, you are almost obligated to venture forth.A: I loved every bit of the mission – not only the technological and scientific ambitions of it, but especially its cultural impact. Space exploration is a force of nature unto itself, with the power to inspire generations of future scientists and engineers. The failure should be invoked as a reminder that the day you stop failing is the day you can be sure you are no longer on the frontier. I think we are all looking forward to Chandrayaan-3.A: Joint programmes are always good. They get to take advantage of what each country does best, resulting in a mission that is greater than either agency could have achieved alone. No one country has a monopoly on innovation. Remember that the famous Higgs boson (particle) is in part named after Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose. Science and technology at its best is fundamentally and in-herently international.A: Geopolitics and economics tend to be greater forces than science in world affairs. A perceived loss of leadership in space could be all that’s driving that decision.A. They should have been in place decades ago. I don’t see them (private industry) leading the effort, but instead flowing into space opportunities opened by government missions. Launch, cargo, astronaut transport, etc. To do something first is costly, with very little return on investment. Governments can justify it for non-economic reasons based in culture or politics. Businesses cannot.A: The world is interconnected as never before. Startups generally have access to venture capitalist funds that other kinds of companies do not. So, this has nothing to do with the government if you want this to take place in a free economic market. In a capitalist democracy, if you have an idea for which someone with money thinks they can make more, then it will happen. That being said, startups can serve the Indian space mission according to their own technological speciality. In New York City , for example, the small company Honeybee Robotics got the contract to build and deploy the rock drill used on Nasa’s Mars rover.A: They work theoretically, on paper, but we have no known way to keep wormholes open before they collapse on you as you travel through them. Black holes are real and are found, among other places, in the cores of galaxies.A: I think it’s the best of all three (1980, 2014, 2020) and I’m not just saying that because I serve as host. I say it because it is storytelling brought to a level that is without precedent in a documentary. In fact, it’s hard to think of Cosmos as a documentary at all. It’s science made relevant to us all, empowering us to harness that new-found enlightenment to become better shepherds of our own civilisation, so that the next generation will be proud of what we have done, and not embarrassed by it.A: Our entire understanding of stellar evolution tells us that in five billion years, if we do not have another home, we, along with planet Earth, will be vapourised during the death of the Sun. Consider that only 66 years passed between the Wright brothers first powered flight and the first steps on the Moon. Given that fact, I’m thinking that five billion years (presuming we are not extinct by then) should be plenty of time to figure out how to pack up civilisation and move to another star system.