ISRO’s world record makes Indians proud: Chinese daily

TIL Desk/World/Beijing-Grudgingly acknowledging ISRO’s world record feet of successfully launching 104 satellites on a single rocket would make “Indians proud”, China’s official media today said India’s space programme offered “food for thought” for other countries on how to achieve space success with small budgets. “This is perhaps the first widely followed world record India has made in the field of space technology.

The Indians have reason to be proud,” state-run Global Times said in its editorial today. However the tabloid daily which criticised India in 2013 for sending Mangalyaan to Mars overtaking China despite “millions of poor and illiterate people” said the significance of the ISRO’s new feat is “limited”. “However, the space technology race is not mainly about the number of satellites at one go. It’s fair to say the significance of this achievement is limited,” it said.

Acknowledging that the new record is a “hard-won achievement for India to reach current space technology level with a relatively small investment,” the daily said “it offers food for thought for other countries”. “India launched a lunar probe in 2008 and ranked first among Asian countries by having an unmanned rocket orbit Mars in 2013,” it said.