Space policy, private sector and governance

10 Sep 2026 · Prelims and Mains

India as a space partner

Cooperation has until now mostly meant selling a launch, with a foreign payload riding an Indian rocket at a price no one else matches. What India offers is widening, because it is building a station and a crewed programme of its own.

• More than 430 payloads from 34 countries have flown on Indian rockets.
• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) aims at an indigenous space station, the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, by 2035 and an Indian astronaut on the Moon by 2040.

10 Sep 2026 · Prelims and Mains

The International Space Summit

France hosted the first International Space Summit in Paris, where India argued for cooperation over confrontation, sustainability over short term gain, and inclusion over exclusion. The rules for crowded orbits are being written now, by whoever turns up to write them.

• Its four pillars are security and defence, competitiveness, regulation of activities such as space debris, and science and exploration.
• India welcomed support for the International Telecommunication Union's framework for frequency management.
• The European Space Agency opened talks with ISRO on human spaceflight, lunar exploration and the Venus Orbiter Mission.

PIB, 10 Sep 2026: Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi addresses the International Space Summit in Paris, France (opens in a new tab) · The Hindu, 10 Sep 2026: ESA to explore cooperation with ISRO in human space flight, lunar and Venus missions (opens in a new tab)

12 Aug 2026 · Prelims and Mains

The Artemis Accords

The Artemis Accords are the terms on which the American lunar programme admits a partner, and India accepted them in 2023. They are principles rather than a treaty, which is both why the list of signatories grew so quickly and why the arrangement is contested.

• India was the twenty-seventh of about 70 signatories, a group that includes neither Russia nor China.
• Critics say the Accords sidestep the 1979 Moon Agreement.

The Indian Express, 18 Aug 2026: What India stands to gain by joining NASA's Moon Base programme (opens in a new tab)

12 Aug 2026 · Prelims and Mains

Moon Base

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) invited ISRO to join Moon Base, at the ninth India-United States Civil Space Joint Working Group meeting. An invitation arrives when the host needs something, and what NASA needs is partners to share a programme its budget no longer covers.

• Moon Base is a planned crewed outpost near the lunar south pole, built in stages for research and lunar resources.
• Joining would build ISRO's experience for human spaceflight.
• ISRO would also risk being locked into NASA's technology ecosystem, and technology denial.

The Hindu, 12 Aug 2026: NASA invites ISRO to join Moon Base programme (opens in a new tab)

14 Sep 2026 · Prelims and Mains

Indian Space Policy 2023

The policy settled the division of labour in 2023, so the argument since has been about pace rather than direction. It also set the terms of the opening: what data is free, how much foreign money may come in, and what ISRO stops making.

• The frontier missions ISRO keeps for itself include Gaganyaan, Chandrayaan-4, the Bharatiya Antariksh Station by 2035 and a crewed Moon landing by 2040.
• Earth observation data coarser than 5 m is made available free, while finer data is not.
• Foreign direct investment is allowed to 74 per cent by the automatic route for satellites, 49 per cent for launch vehicles and spaceports, and 100 per cent for components.
• About 450 space startups are registered, against a handful in 2020.
• India's space economy is about $8.4 billion, under 2 per cent of the world's, against a target of $44 billion by 2033.

The Indian Express, 14 Sep 2026: ISRO's 'privatisation' move: What India's space policy says (opens in a new tab)

6 Sep 2026 · 5 Aug 2026 · Prelims and Mains

IN-SPACe

Every private space activity in India ends at the same desk, and IN-SPACe both authorises it and promotes it. The second job is the one that matters to a startup, because it opens government test and launch facilities to firms that could never build their own.

• It has issued 113 authorisations to 52 non-governmental entities.
• It has invited private operators to run the small satellite launch complex at Kulasekarapattinam, Tamil Nadu.
• A private operator at a launch complex raises questions of safety, liability and accountability to Parliament.

The Indian Express, 6 Sep 2026: Letter sent after GSLV launch: ISRO staff question trajectory of space privatisation, want chief to clarify (opens in a new tab) · PIB, 5 Aug 2026: Private space sector: first commercial Earth-observation constellation and reforms (opens in a new tab)

14 Sep 2026 · Prelims and Mains

NewSpace India Limited

Where IN-SPACe gives permission, NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) sells. It exists so that a customer, Indian or foreign, buys a launch or a satellite from a company rather than from a research agency.

• It takes technology developed with public money to market, and books commercial launches for Indian and foreign clients.

The Indian Express, 14 Sep 2026: ISRO's 'privatisation' move: What India's space policy says (opens in a new tab)

14 Sep 2026 · 6 Sep 2026 · Prelims and Mains

Technology transfer to industry

Asking ISRO to move out of manufacturing operational systems means handing a mature design, and the knowledge of how to build it, to a company that has never built one. How far that has gone differs sharply from one launch vehicle to the next.

6 Sep 2026 · Prelims and Mains

The privatisation debate inside ISRO

ISRO's employee associations wrote to the chairman asking whether the agency would stop building launch vehicles and routine satellites altogether. The answer given was that the shift is ecosystem expansion and not privatisation.

• The staff cite vacant posts, scientists leaving and revenue given up on commercial launches.
• Almost 80 per cent of ISRO's budget already goes to industry.

The Indian Express, 6 Sep 2026: Letter sent after GSLV launch: ISRO staff question trajectory of space privatisation, want chief to clarify (opens in a new tab) · The Indian Express, 7 Sep 2026: Private sector push is 'ecosystem expansion, not privatisation': ISRO allays staff concerns (opens in a new tab)

5 Aug 2026 · Prelims and Mains

India's first commercial Earth observation constellation

Until now an Indian imaging satellite was built and flown by the state. A private consortium will build, own and operate this one, which is the thing the policy's admission of private firms was meant to produce.

• The consortium is to fly twelve satellites by 2029, India's first fully commercial Earth observation constellation.
• The payloads are optical, multispectral, hyperspectral with 250 bands, and X-band radar.

PIB, 5 Aug 2026: Private space sector: first commercial Earth-observation constellation and reforms (opens in a new tab)

16 Aug 2026 · Prelims and Mains

India's cost per kilogram to orbit

India's reputation is for cheap launches. A peer reviewed study worked the price out for each kilogram carried and found the opposite, and the reason lies in how often an Indian rocket flies.

• A kilogram to low earth orbit cost $13,302 on Indian rockets in 2025, the highest among major nations.
• The global average was $3,868 and the United States $3,225.
• The cause is rarity rather than inefficiency: India flew five launches that year, mostly on small rockets.
• Two PSLV failures had halted ISRO launches from January 2026, sending GSAT-N2 and several startup satellites to SpaceX.
• Skyroot's Vikram-1 reached orbit in July 2026.

The Hindu, 16 Aug 2026: Despite its reputation, India's per-unit space launch cost highest: study (opens in a new tab)

13 Aug 2026 · 5 Aug 2026 · Prelims and Mains

Collision avoidance manoeuvres

Space debris is not an occasional emergency but a standing cost of working in orbit, and the bill arrives as fuel. A satellite that moves out of the way spends what cannot be replaced, so debris shortens its working life even when nothing is ever struck.

13 Aug 2026 · Prelims and Mains

Tracking objects in orbit

Nothing can be dodged until it is seen, so a debris policy is first of all a tracking programme. Two instruments do most of that work for India, one on the coast and one in the Himalaya.

• The multi-object tracking radar at Sriharikota is already working.
• The NETRA (Network for Space Objects Tracking and Analysis) telescope at Hanle will track objects of 30 cm or more in geostationary orbit.
• Early steps towards active debris removal have already been demonstrated in orbit.

PIB, 13 Aug 2026: Space debris: ISRO's collision-avoidance manoeuvres and Debris Free Space Mission (opens in a new tab)

13 Aug 2026 · Prelims and Mains

The Debris Free Space Mission

A national pledge cannot clear an orbit that everyone shares, but it does decide what India itself adds to it. The instruments beneath that pledge are older than the pledge, and one gap in them is still open.

• The Debris Free Space Mission, announced in 2024, sets the aim of zero debris from every Indian space actor.
• ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) has belonged to the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, formed in 1993, since 1996.
• Norms issued in 2024 by the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) require a satellite to be disposed of once its mission ends.
• A framework on liability for damage to third parties is still under consideration.

PIB, 5 Aug 2026: Space debris: ISRO's collision-avoidance manoeuvres and Debris Free Space Mission (opens in a new tab)

24 Aug 2026 · Prelims and Mains

How an object leaves orbit

An orbit is not a parking space: the atmosphere reaches faintly into the lowest of them and drags whatever is there slowly down. How long that takes, and what survives the fall, is what the re-entry rules are written around.

• Atmospheric drag pulls a low orbit down on its own, so an object in low earth orbit comes back in years or decades whether anyone means it to or not.
• Higher orbits have too little air for drag to do that work, so an object left there stays.
• Re-entry does not destroy everything: light structure burns up, while dense parts such as tanks and engine components can survive to the ground.
• That is why a planned re-entry is aimed at open ocean, and why where a dead object comes down is no longer its owner's business alone.

24 Aug 2026 · Prelims and Mains

India's re-entry rules

IN-SPACe issued India's first guidelines on planned re-entry on the third National Space Day. They settle a question of jurisdiction as much as one of safety, since a falling object does not consult the map beneath it.

• Any Indian entity carrying out a planned re-entry, anywhere, needs IN-SPACe authorisation.
• A foreign entity re-entering over Indian territory must work through an Indian incorporated entity answerable to Indian law.
• They draw on the United Nations Guidelines for the Long-term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities.

The Hindu, 24 Aug 2026: India's first rules for planned re-entry of spacecraft (opens in a new tab)

5 Aug 2026 · Prelims and Mains

The Falcon 9 Moon strike

An abandoned upper stage does not always fall back to Earth, and one left on a lunar trajectory arrives somewhere else instead. A four tonne Falcon 9 stage, adrift since a January 2025 lunar launch, struck the Moon near the Einstein crater at 8,700 km/h.

• Because its mass and speed were known, the impact is a controlled source experiment on lunar dust and seismic effects.
• The last comparable impact was LCROSS in 2009, which confirmed water ice near the south pole.
• The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was to image the site.

The Hindu, 5 Aug 2026: Astronomers prepare as SpaceX rocket stage nears Moon strike (opens in a new tab)