In his spartan office chamber housed in a corner of the New Delhi-based United Services Institute last summer, Lieutenant General (retd) A K Bhatt, former Director-General of Military Operations counselled patience. “Several specialists from ISRO, the Department of Space (DoS) and industry executives have put their heads together to give shape to India’s space policy. Wait and watch,” he said. A hint of a smile suggested that he was fully aware of the broad contours. Two months later, the general, who took up the post-retirement assignment of Director General of the Indian Space Association (ISpA) in October 2021, was still upbeat on the impending policy.
A day after the Narendra Modi Cabinet approved the Indian Space Policy 2023 on April 6, he said, nursing his luxurious moustache, “While this was long overdue, it is a historic moment. It will pave the way forward for space reforms and augment private industry participation to drive the space economy opportunity for India.”
Following the Cabinet approval, ISpA’s mandate to work on policy advocacy, engage and operate with all stakeholders, and act as a “catalyst for accelerating the exchange of knowledge, information and technology” across the entire Indian space ecosystem will increase manifold. Almost on a cue from the Cabinet decision, ISpA held a three-day Indian DefSpace Symposium (April 11-13) in association with DRDO to bring together stakeholders interested in “boosting India’s military space capability and plans”. The symposium, which was attended by Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan, Air Vice Marshal DV Khot and DRDO Chairman Dr Samir V Kamat, focused on delivering space domain awareness and satellite communications to enhance military operations.
Funding for new space capabilities is also on the agenda. The idea is to expand international partnerships and develop a defence space strategy that dovetails with the national line. Bengaluru-based space innovations company Elena Geo Systems presented to Gen. Chauhan India’s first indigenously developed chip that can facilitate, all at once, navigation, positioning and timing for satellite signal receivers linked to the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS). Now renamed Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC), it has seven satellites linked to a 24X7 network of ground stations. The chip is fabricated in Taiwan, which is the leader in the sector: another reason why China poses a military threat that the US is determined to counter.
The Elena processor is capable of tracking Russian, American and European navigation systems. “We’ve supplied 400 units of the microchip to the infantry. While India’s defence and private sectors have placed orders for 10,000 chips, we can manufacture one lakh chips a month. The nation can now boast atmanirbharata in this critical sector and NavIC can replace the American GPS,” says Col (retd) Velan, Chief Technology Officer at Elena Geo Systems. Besides self-reliance, Elena’s end-to-end presence across the NavIC domain will help isolate BeiDou, the Chinese navigation system. The 10-year-old company was founded by Velan and a few other former army officers at IIT-Kharagpur as an R&D company.
XI’S STELLAR AMBITIONS
Asia is the escalating theatre of space war, with China and India locked in a race for dominance, while Japan and the US watch the game unfold. Way back in 2014, Joan Johnson-Freese, a space policy expert at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, had warned, “The space race then was all about image and prestige, techno-nationalism, the idea that your space programme is an indicator of your power and technology prowess.” The same thing holds true in Asia now. Significantly six out of 10 countries that have independently launched satellites are in Asia: China, India, Iran, Japan, North Korea and South Korea. July 19, 1964, was when Beijing successfully launched its first biological space experiment—a rocket with eight white mice on board.
In 2021, China carried out 55 space launches while India conducted just two; one of these, launched in August 2022. was dubbed euphemistically a ‘partial success’. China’s Long March series of rockets, run and operated by the military, are far bigger and heavier. A permanently crewed space station called Tiangong (‘Sky Palace’ in Mandarin) is operated by the China Manned Space Agency. In November 2022, it sent a team of taikonauts (Chinese astronauts) to the station. The previous year, China issued
a white paper on space that explains its nationalist president Xi Jinping’s ambition to make his country the world’s top space power.
It has signed an MoU with Russia to establish a moon station by 2023. Beijing’s space strategy is an extension of its aggressive foreign policy since it envisages Tiangong as the only operating space station— after the ISS, operated by the US, the European Space Agency, Russia and others, retires by 2030—which can host missions of friendly states. A senior ISRO scientist elaborates that while Chinese space programmes and missions are often covert, their rockets are good options for global satellite launch operators. “This is largely because of concerns related to China’s clandestine access to Western technology, making their space products of questionable provenance,” he says. Although Indian foreign minister S Jaishankar scoffed about a small economy competing with a big one, many foreign satellite launch companies believe that launch costs are cheaper in India. Former ISRO chairman Dr K Sivan says, “We cannot compare with China, but all I can say is our space programme and the satellite launches are meeting our own requirements very well as other space powers are happy to launch from India.”
CHINA’S MOON GRAB
Meanwhile, the race for resources has spilled over into space. Colonising the moon is the new superpower priority. China plans to create an annual $10-trillion Earth-Moon economy by 2050. As Russian space plans, distracted by the Ukraine war, have taken a step back, the US and China are the two main rivals left. And Beijing doesn’t want to be just a global player anymore; it is investing in technology like quantum communications, robotics, on-orbit servicing, assembly and manufacturing, AI and space-based solar power. NASA’s administrator Bill Nelson admitted to a journalist that Beijing could, “under the guise of scientific research”, attempt to establish a monopoly on resource-rich locations of the moon, while excluding other space agencies. The Chinese aim to send astronauts to Earth’s satellite, which the US—the first country to do so—is concerned about. Yang Yuguang, vice-chair of the International Astronautical Federation’s space transportation committee, was dismissive of the space race concept. He told ANN, “If some people are so fond of a space race, then it is their own space race, and we will not get involved. In terms of moon landing, it is our business to decide when we will send our astronauts there, and it is no one else’s business. And when others will land their people on the moon, it is none of China’s business.”
India is part of the Outer Space Treaty signed at the UN General Assembly in 1966, forbidding nations or corporations to claim sovereignty on the moon or conquer territory. Chandrayaan-1 has tracked water on the moon: a feat no other country has achieved. After Chandrayaan-2 crashed on September 7, 2019, the authorities have become tightlipped about Chandrayaan-3 mission; although it will be using its rover and lander to take multiple studies, measure the lunar surface and carry back samples for analyses. India is also aware that Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei spent over 21 hours in space aboard Shenzhou 5 spacecraft in 2003. ISRO is now working on the `9,023-crore Gaganyaan Mission, which aims to send Indian astronauts into orbit by 2024 and construct a space centre out there. Four Indian Air Force pilots, their names withheld for reasons of security, are training for the mission with the Russian space agency Roscosmos. Space technology has the most glitz and glamour: rockets blasting off, satellites playing eye in the sky and astronauts “going where no one has gone before”.
Space successes make governments look good. “The Chinese view this as a useful exercise in swaying popular opinion inside the country in favour of this particular regime,” Roger Launius, Associate Director of Collections and Curatorial Affairs at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, told an American space journal, adding, “This is a way to make the people in the nation feel better about the government.” During the Cold War, the US and USSR were vying to be the first ones to dominate space and boost national pride. The Soviets conducted the first manned mission with Yuri Gagarin in 1961 after which the Americans put men on the moon in 1969.
BEIJING MILITARISES SPACE
The Chinese are cognisant that the success of the Balakot air strikes in 2019 was partly owed to ISRO’s GSAT-7A satellite, which fed information to Indian warplanes and ground radar stations on the air base. India has also launched a satellite to monitor vessels in the Indian Ocean to track piracy and monitor naval threats. On the night of February 9, 2023, the indigenously developed Low Earth Orbit (LEO), a 112-ft-tall Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) roared up and away from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh with a payload of three satellites. In 15 minutes, all three were off on their designated 450 km-high circular orbits. Naturally, China sees India as a space threat. It will be giving Pakistan made-in-China 10-m-long SLC-18 space surveillance radar. Made by the state-owned China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, it can spot LEO satellites in all weather conditions. LEO is the flight route for military satellites as an observatory craft rather than an attack vehicle.
Circling space at a height of 300-1,000 km, an Indian LEO can cover the entire length of Pakistan in about seven-eight minutes. Any of India’s 21 LEOs out of its 53 active satellites (China has 499 satellites in orbit) can map even minute geographical details and military movement real time on the ground, should war break out. With an orbit speed over Earth of 128 minutes or less and making 11.25 daily trips, Indians can monitor movements on the ground round the clock.
China has launched more satellites than the rest of the world put together that accounts for over 10 percent of total satellites launched till now; India’s is just 1.09 percent. India’s heaviest rocket, the GSLV Mark 3, can only carry a 4-tonne payload, while China’s Long March 5 can launch 14 tonnes. Chinese intelligence gathering and surveillance capabilities in space have doubled in the past four years. Most alarming is the fact that Beijing launched a nuclear weapon into a LOE, orbiting the globe at a height of 150 km before coming down to hit the test-target. Starting in 2007, it conducted many destructive anti-satellite (ASAT) tests, which it tried to explain away as missile defence tests. India’s ASAT weapon was also tested in 2019. While most DoS officials maintain a stoic silence over “weaponising space”, defence sources say work on “directed energy”, a euphemism for militarising space and associated infrastructure, began in 2017 with the DRDO’s top secret A-SAT or anti-satellite programme. At that time, an old satellite (Microsat-1), whose lifespan was over, was destroyed in space by an interceptor missile. Only a select group of scientists were aware of the programme codenamed Project XSV-1 or Mission Shakti, which was cleared at the “highest quarters” in 2016. It is time India upped the ante. Its current share is 2 percent in the global space economy, but New Delhi plans to raise this to 9 percent by 2030.
PARTNERSHIP OF TALENT
India has decided to harness private talent in the space sector to turbocharge its stratospheric ambitions. The April 5 Cabinet decision was likely spurred by the government-owned NewSpace India Ltd’s launching of 36 communications satellites on March 26 from Sriharikota. This was done for the London-headquartered communications network OneWeb Ltd, which is owned by Bharti Enterprises and the UK government. This was also OneWeb’s 18th launch—its third this year—taking the network’s total constellation to 618 satellites. By 2023 end, OneWeb says, it will be ready to roll out complete global coverage by partnering with leading providers. “The OneWeb launches have demonstrated two things: first, the reliability of Indian satellites and their vehicles is much higher compared to other global players; and secondly, all future commercial missions will not only be enhanced but will also be cost effective,” Sivan says, adding that “the process has shown that there is now more competition in the
global market”.
Early in the year, India saw satellite launches by two start-ups. In January, Bengaluru-based Digantara, launched by three young engineers, sent out 40 satellites to gather information on millions of pieces of space debris that litter the LEO which NASA describes as an “orbital space junk yard”. In November 2022, Skyroot Aerospace, a Hyderabad-based space exploration start-up, launched India’s first privately built and designed rocket named Vikram-S, with three customer payloads, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. The objective of the mission, named ‘Prarambh’, involved Vikram-S, a single-stage sub-orbital launch vehicle that would test and validate the majority of the technologies in the Vikram series of space launch satellites. Skyroot Aerospace successfully raised $51 million or Rs 403 crore through a Series-B financing round, in September 2022.
Led by the Singapore-headquartered long-term investment firm GIC, it is the largest funding round for space tech in India. Though such amounts are like a spec in space when compared to the massive funds being raised by OneWeb or other international private and government space-related initiatives. According to industry sources, the March 26 launch indicated a commitment to provide connectivity across India’s length and breadth and, once activated, the solutions will “bring secure connectivity to enterprises, towns, villages, municipalities and schools, including the most remote areas”. More importantly, it signalled India’s ambitions in space. Global conglomerates such as OneWeb and Elon Musk’s SpaceX sense huge business prospects especially at a time when there is a putative isolation of China and Russia.
INDIA SEEKS GLOBAL SPACE
These are unprecedented times for the global space ecosystem. In January 2022, as many as 90 countries were operating in space, with eight of them demonstrating the capability to consistently launch orbital spacecraft. India belongs in this select club. Lt Gen Bhatt says, “India has the capability to unleash the innovative potential of its space enterprise aimed at achieving national and global aspirations.” For as expansive as space may be, most of the advanced countries are operating in a closer and more condensed neighbourhood than ever before.
Indeed, countries that are far more advanced than India in space technology have been scouting Indian cities for talents and partners. To this end, two top Blue Origin executives held a day-long workshop at the Bangalore International Centre on November 1, 2022, to take “initial steps” and attract “cooperation modes” for “international engagement opportunities” for the Jeff Bezos-owned Orbital Reef, which is expected to replace the NASA-led multinational ISS. Blue Origin LLC, also owned and operated by Bezos, is an aerospace, defence and space exploration company headquartered in Kent, Washington.
It also makes rocket engines.
A commercially owned and operated space station, Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef will “start operating as a next-generation business park beyond earth, with the ability to provide access to space for all”. Blue Origin’s visit to India was aimed at exploring possible tie-ups and discovering capabilities among entrepreneurs and other talents in space. Indian space industry sources said that any domestic participation or partnering for Orbital Reef will “hopefully” take place once Gaganyaan is launched.
As the apex, non-profit industry body working exclusively towards successful exploration, collaboration and development of the private and public space industry in India, the ISpA has, as its founding members, some of the country’s large companies such as Bharti Airtel, Larsen & Toubro, the Tata Group’s Nelco, OneWeb, Walchandnagar Industries and Alpha Design Technologies. ISpA’s other core members include Godrej, Hughes India, Ananth Technology Ltd, Azista-BST Aerospace Pvt Ltd, BEL, Centum Electronics and Maxar India. While the private sector will, quite expectedly, pull out all the stops, reforms and leaps in space began extending to ISRO. In June 2020, the government cleared the setting up of IN-SPACe, which has already begun guiding private companies, including start-ups, to support and “supplement” ISRO in pushing the boundaries in cosmos. There was more: the draft spacecom, remote-sensing and technology transfer policies.
A Space Activities Bill and a National Space Act will give a definite shape to the overall efforts in space. These frameworks and legislative efforts are part of an undeclared, yet definite, move to strengthen space defence which will set the stage of India’s bid for some strategic advantage. As the ISpA, which has 54 member companies, most of which are start-ups, keenly await the official gazette notification and the finer details of the 2023 space policy, Indian space ecosystem is experiencing great times like never before, but the booming space economy also faces a few potential hurdles.
Humanity has studied space since antiquity when people would look up to watch and admire the stars in the cosmos. They still do. But today as mankind sends rockets, astronauts and space probes into the solar system and beyond, what is needed is not only grit and determination but also a universal willingness to let peace prevail up there.
Wings of Fire
India launches its first satellite, the Aryabhata, into orbit in 1975
SLV-3, the country’s first experimental satellite launch vehicle, sent on July 18, 1980
The PSLV, India’s third generation launch vehicle, launches in October 1994
First moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, sent in October 2008
Sends its first interplanetary mission to Mars in 2013, becoming the fourth space agency in the world to reach the orbit, and the first to do so in its maiden attempt
The government launches Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center (IN-SPACe) in 2020
India’s PSLV C51, the first dedicated commercial launch executed by NewSpace, the commercial arm of ISRO, launches in 2021
Space technology startup Skyroot Aerospace sends India’s first privately developed rocket Vikram-S into space in 2022
ISRO’s heaviest rocket, LVM3, successfully places 36 satellites in orbit in 2022
Digantara, an aerospace company based out in Bengaluru, builds the world’s first commercial space weather sensor
Agnikul Cosmos under IN-SPACe establishes India’s first private space vehicle launchpad at
Sriharikota
China
Plans to build a moon base by 2028, and subsequently send crewed missions
Launch Chang'e 6 probe in 2024, which will explore the moon's South Pole for natural resources and return samples
Send new sample-collection landers and orbiters to Mars in 2028-30
Launch the Xuntian telescope in the next five years, with capabilities equivalent to Hubble
As the first non-NASA probes to leave the solar system, Interstellar Express will explore the heliosphere and interstellar space between 2024-26
Orbital exploration of Jupiter and its four largest moons launch around 2029-2030
A mission to Uranus proposed for implementation after 2030
INDIA
Aims to increase its share of the $420 billion field from 2 percent to 9 percent by 2030
Send humans to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), as part of Gaganyaan mission (the first uncrewed mission is set to launch this year, followed by another unmanned mission, and finally a human spaceflight)
Launch Chandrayaan-3, its third lunar exploration mission and a mission repeat of Chandrayaan-2, in June 2023
Launch its first indigenously made space station by 2030
Send Aditya L-1, its first space-based mission to study the solar atmosphere, this year
Venus Orbiter Mission planned for launch in December 2024
RUSSIA
After Roscosmos announced that it will leave the ISS programme after 2024, Russia plans its own space station in 2025
To continue its Luna-25 moon mission, scheduled to launch this year
US
NASA's Artemis Programme to return humans to the moon in 2024 for the first time since the Apollo
mission in 1972
A new generation manned carrier rocket to make its debut launch in 2027
NASA’s Da Vinci will explore Venus’ atmosphere
Dragonfly to launch in 2027 to explore Saturn’s moon Titan
JAPAN
Martian Moons eXploration mission to launch in 2024
A privately owned lunar lander, built by space company ispace, will attempt to land on the moon’s surface this month
To deploy 50 satellites in low Earth orbit to track
next-generation hypersonic missiles that can evade current defence systems
Aims to launch world’s first wooden satellite this year