The Space Age began with the launch of the satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957, and in 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the world’s first man in space. Neil Armstrong made history by walking on the moon in 1969. The first space age had become a reality.
Today, the second space age has arrived. Although there is no exact date of its beginning, the difference is evident in today’s space domain. Between 1950 and 1991, a period dominated by the Cold War, there were 60 to 120 space launches annually, and 93% of these were carried out by the governments of the United States and the then Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). Three decades later, there are not only many more actors in the space scene, but also mostly private companies. Last year, there were 180 rocket/space launches, 61 by Elon Musk’s SpaceX; Since 2020, 90% of global space launches have been carried out by and for the private sector.
India’s space journey begins
India made a modest entry into the first space age in the 1960s. The first sounding rocket, the US-supplied Nike-Apache, was launched in 1963 at Thumba (Kerala) and in 1969, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) was established. It has come a long way in recent years with over 15,000 employees and an annual budget between ₹12,000 crore-₹14,000 crore. Through these decades, it has sought to give priority to social objectives and benefits.
Its first major project was the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) which involved leasing an American satellite for educational outreach covering five million people in 2,400 villages in 1975–76. Satellite technology was a new mass communication tool. This led to the INSAT series in the 1980s, followed by GSAT, which provided the foundation for the country’s telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructure.
This was followed by remote sensing capability development. The use of space-based imagery gradually expanded to cover fisheries and urban management for weather forecasting, resource mapping of forests, agricultural yields, groundwater and watershed analysis. Following the Indian remote sensing programme, the plan progressed with the Oceansat and Cartosat series. The field of satellite-aided navigation emerged later. It started with GAGAN, a joint project between ISRO and the Airports Authority of India to increase Global Positioning System (GPS) coverage of the area to improve air traffic management over Indian airspace. This has now been expanded into a regional navigation satellite system called Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC).
Satellite launch capabilities developed in parallel. Beginning with SLV-1 in the 1980s, ISRO took a decade to develop the PSLV series, which has become its workhorse with over 50 successful launches.
space capability
The origins of the second space age can be traced to the Internet. The process accelerated in India in the 1990s in the form of the emergence of private TV channels alongside direct-to-home broadcasting, along with cable TV. The demand for satellite transponders and ground-based services exploded. Today, more than half the transponders insured in Indian homes are on foreign satellites.
The last 15 years saw another change, and this time India was tied with the developed world. The era of mobile telephony followed by smartphones has shown the world that India is a data-hungry and data-rich society. Broadband, OTT and now 5G promises double digit annual growth in demand for satellite based services.
In 2020, the global space economy was estimated at $450 billion, growing to $600 billion by 2025. The Indian space economy, estimated at $9.6 billion in 2020, is expected to grow to $13 billion by 2025. Enabling policy and regulatory environment. The Indian space industry could easily exceed $60 billion by 2030, creating over two lakh jobs directly.
This is because in terms of end-user revenue, only a fifth is generated by the government. Media and entertainment account for 26% of India’s space economy, with consumer and retail services accounting for another 21%. In terms of space activities, downstream activities such as satellite services and associated ground segments are dominant, accounting for over 70% of India’s space economy; Upstream activities of satellite manufacturing and launch services contribute a smaller share. A similar trend can be seen in developed countries. This is because India has been an early adopter of digital app-based services.
The growing role of the private sector is also evident in the number and ownership of satellites. According to the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), there are 8,261 satellites in orbit, of which about 5,000 are active. Till 2010, about 60 to 100 satellites were launched every year. The pace has picked up in recent years. In 2020, 1,283 satellites were launched. Today, Starlink operates a constellation of more than 3,500 satellites and has millions of paying customers. Starlink and OneWeb (in which Airtel has a stake) both have a constellation of 40,000 satellites each. And Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has launched Project Kuiper to bring low-latency broadband connectivity to the world. How this domain will be regulated is a separate challenge, but it gives a glimpse of the scope for expansion.
create an enabling environment
The Indian private sector is responding to the demands of the second space age. From less than a dozen space start-ups five years ago, there are more than 100 today. The pace of investment is increasing. From $3 million in 2018, it is set to double in 2019 and cross $65 million in 2021. The sector is ready to take-off – as the IT industry did in the 1990s – as a transformative growth multiplier for the national economy.
Today, ISRO manages four to five launches annually. It manages 53 operational satellites – 21 for communications, 21 for Earth observation, eight for navigation and the rest as scientific experimental satellites (China operates 541). Apart from this, ISRO has missions like Chandrayaan, Mangalyaan and Gaganyaan (Manned Space Mission). ISRO has always been an open organization that has worked closely with the Indian private sector. However, for some private sector companies, work related to space technology is only a small part of their revenue stream. They were satisfied as vendors, producing defined specs and designs.
Start-ups are different. Their revenue stream depends on space related activities and they require a separate relationship with ISRO and the government. ISRO today is operator, user, service provider, licensor, rule maker and also an incubator. It has propelled India through the first space age and it needs to do what it can do best now within its resources and its high-quality manpower – research. To be honest, the government is considering it. In 2017, the government introduced the first draft Space Activities Bill in Parliament, but it lapsed in 2019. There was talk of commercializing PSLV and SSLV launch services and NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) was set up to replace Antrix. The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center (IN-SPACe) was set up in 2020 as a single-window-clearance for the private sector. However, it is not clear whether it will emerge as a licensing authority or a regulator. An Indian Space Association (ISPA) was formed as an industry association.
In recent years, a series of policy papers have been circulated for discussion – a satcom/telecom policy, an earth observation policy and a foreign direct investment policy. They have served a purpose. What is needed now is legislation (a Space Activities Act). It provides the legal basis that the policy papers lack; Help establish a regulatory authority and create an enabling environment for raising venture capital funds in the Indian space start-up industry. There is an opportunity for India to join the second space age; It should not be lost.
Rakesh Sood is a former diplomat