Last week in Bengaluru, Sunita Williams flagged the “rigidity and bureaucracy” on the International Space Station, the habitable spacecraft circling Earth aboard which she has spent a total of 608 days. The former Nasa astronaut expressed hope that the inhabitants of future space stations would enjoy more freedom to analyse and decide, rather than having to depend on ground control stations. She highlighted the lack of access to previous ISS experiments’ database, which needs to be sourced from terrestrial centres, making continuity in space-based experiments difficult. The ISS, which has hosted humans since 2000, is currently planned to remain operational till 2030 end, extendable to 2032.
Williams’ observation, made at the 9th Bengaluru Space Expo, put the limelight on future space stations, including India’s 52-tonne, ₹20,000-crore Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS), which the Indian Space Research Organisation plans to operationalise by 2035. The discussion must goad Isro into systematically preparing to make BAS the ideal successor to the ISS, as many international astronauts have already expressed willingness to work on the Indian station.
Isro is not alone in the fray. Vast Space, an American company, plans to launch its first commercial space station, Haven 1, in 2027 as a precursor to larger modular artificial-gravity habitats. Although Isro has nine years before the scheduled BAS launch, much needs to be done in the intervening period. Gaganyaan, India’s first manned space mission, is scheduled in early 2027. Isro has already demonstrated autonomous orbital docking and undocking capability in January-April 2025, but has not yet tried it in a live mission using operational-scale capsules. This application will be crucial while assembling the BAS in space, and in ferrying astronauts and equipment to and from it. This technology will also be vital for the Chandrayaan-4 lunar soil sample mission in 2027-28.
The first of BAS’s five modules, weighing 10 tonnes and costing about ₹1,760 crore, is expected to be launched in 2028. Now is the time for developing heavy-lift launchers, and for honing skills in docking-undocking, astronauts’ spacewalk, sustainable power transfer and survival in microgravity, alongside carving out a robust research system for offering scientists freedom and on-board database access. This is a challenge Isro must meet to realise the dream of making its space station an ideal successor to the ISS.