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Space policy, private sector and governance
How space is governed and opened to private firms: space policy and its bodies, startups and the space economy, international cooperation and treaties, and debris and traffic in orbit. Prelims has asked about the part private entities play in India's space programme.
All 11 subjects shown; the 6 that changed from 1 to 15 August 2026 are marked.Show only these
The Artemis Accords
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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.
European Space Agency
- Ground stations to track Gaganyaan, India's crewed spaceflight missions
CNES (Centre National d'Études Spatiales), France's space agency
- Built Megha-Tropiques and SARAL with ISRO
- TRISHNA, a joint thermal infrared mission tracking land surface temperature and evapotranspiration
- TRISHNA due on a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) next year
What changed
10 Sep 2026
- 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.
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
The Hindu, 12 Aug 2026: NASA invites ISRO to join Moon Base programme (opens in a new tab)
12 Aug 2026
- NASA invited ISRO to join Moon Base at the ninth India and United States Civil Space Joint Working Group meeting.
- 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)
21 Jul 2026Updatealso in news
- Bengaluru hosts the India and United States Civil Space Joint Working Group in August. The group was set up in 2005.
The Hindu, 21 Jul 2026: Bengaluru to host India-U.S. space group meet in August (opens in a new tab)
Background reading: The Indian Express, 18 Aug 2026: What India stands to gain by joining NASA's Moon Base programme (opens in a new tab)
Policy and private sector
Indian Space Policy 2023
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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.
ISRO
- Research and new technologies
- Share technology with industry
- Human spaceflight roadmap
- Move out of manufacturing operational systems
IN-SPACe
- Authorise launches, satellites, ground stations
- Promote and hand hold industry
- Open access to government facilities
NSIL
- Commercialise publicly developed technology
- Commercial launches for Indian and foreign clients
Non-governmental entities
- End to end space activities
- Build and operate satellites and ground assets
What changed
14 Sep 2026
6 Sep 2026
- ISRO's employee associations asked whether the agency would stop building launch vehicles and routine satellites; 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.
16 Aug 2026
- 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.
16 Jul 2026Update
- After about 100 personnel quit across centres, against a sanctioned strength of 18,142 with 2,613 posts vacant, the Department of Space directed that resignations and voluntary retirement of scientific staff linked to Gaganyaan and other critical projects not be accepted as routine until those projects are complete.
Background reading: The Indian Express, 7 Sep 2026: Private sector push is 'ecosystem expansion, not privatisation': ISRO allays staff concerns (opens in a new tab)
IN-SPACe
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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.
What changed
6 Sep 2026
29 Aug 2026Updatealso in newsnewly added
- Under the invitation to run the Kulasekarapattinam launch complex, the private operator would handle launch campaigns and safety, with ISRO guiding for one year or three campaigns, whichever comes first.
5 Aug 2026
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2026: private entities in the space programme, including IN-SPACe
NewSpace India Limited
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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.
What changed
Technology transfer to industry
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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.
SSLV
- Designed with industry in mind, assembled in about 3 days
- Transferred to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) in 2025 for ₹511 crore
PSLV
- Assembled in about 70 days
- A HAL and Larsen & Toubro consortium is building five
- Fresh call for its technology in 2026
LVM3
- A 2024 attempt to commercialise was never awarded
- New call in 2026
What changed
India's first commercial Earth observation constellation
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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.
What changed
5 Aug 2026
7 Jul 2026Updatealso in news
- Contact was lost with Drishti, built by a Bengaluru startup and described as the world's first OptoSAR satellite, which combines optical and synthetic aperture radar sensors on one platform. A geomagnetic storm is thought to have damaged a critical system. It had been launched on a Falcon 9 on 3 May.
Space debris and re-entry
Collision avoidance manoeuvres
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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.
20Collision avoidance manoeuvres by Indian satellites in 2025
9Manoeuvres in 2026 up to August
20 of 22Active Indian satellites in low earth orbit at higher collision risk
What changed
Tracking objects in orbit
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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.
What changed
The Debris Free Space Mission
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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.
What changed
Background reading: PIB, 5 Aug 2026: Space debris: ISRO's collision-avoidance manoeuvres and Debris Free Space Mission (opens in a new tab)
How an object leaves orbit
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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.
What changed
India's re-entry rules
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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.
What changed
24 Aug 2026
The Hindu, 24 Aug 2026: India's first rules for planned re-entry of spacecraft (opens in a new tab)
30 Jul 2026Update
- IN-SPACe issued guidelines for the planned re-entry of space objects. Only objects designed to survive re-entry, or planned for it, need authorisation.
- Also in news: NASA launched a robotic mission to catch and tow the falling Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to a stable orbit, a test of servicing satellites in orbit.
The Hindu, 30 Jul 2026: Guidelines issued for planned re-entry of space objects (opens in a new tab)
Also filed elsewhere
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- Vikram-1 · on Launch vehicles, satellites and applications
Vikram-1 is a four stage launch vehicle about 22 metres tall, built by Skyroot Aerospace of Hyderabad, with three solid stages and a restartable liquid upper stage called the Orbital Adjustment Module.