India Inc. Means Business In Space | CPT PPP Coverage

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ON NOVEMBER 18, 2022, Vikram-S, a sub-orbital rocket of Skyroot Aerospace, made its maiden flight from Satish Dhawan Space Centre of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. It was India’s first privately-built rocket launched from a government facility. For the Hyderabad-based start-up, the rocket, built using advanced components such as carbon composite structures and 3D-printed parts, validated over 80% technologies that will be used in its Vikram-1 orbital vehicle, planned for launch in 2023. Sub-orbital vehicles travel high enough to reach the edge of outer space but do not have the energy to achieve orbit.

Less than two weeks earlier, on November 8, another space-tech start-up, Chennai-based Agnikul Cosmos, successfully test-fired its single-piece 3D-printed engine, Agnilet, at Vertical Test Facility, Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station at ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananth- apuram. Agnilet, world’s first single-piece 3D-printed rocket engine, was fully designed and manufactured in India. The test validated the company’s in-house technology and is being considered a big step towards mastering technology to design, develop and fire rocket engines. The prowess of Indian space-tech start-ups is not limited to validation of technologies. Three of the eight nano-satellites ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) carried during its 56th flight to space from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on November 26 were built by Indian start-ups. These included a hyperspectral imaging satellite made by Bengaluru-based Pixxel and two amateur radio communication nano-satellites manufactured by Hyderabad-based Dhruva Space. Hyperspectral imaging is a technique that analyses a wide spectrum of light instead of just assigning primary colours (red, green, blue) to each pixel. Pixxel had caught attention in April 2022 when it became the first Indian company to launch a commercial satellite into space through U.S. billionaire Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX).

Unprecedented entrepreneurial spirit is driving India’s space businesses to conquer new horizons after government opened up the sector, for decades an exclusive domain of ISRO, to private, especially home-grown, companies. Pivotal to this change have been a dozen policy initiatives over last five years, including a shift in ISRO’s role from government’s space agency to mentor of private space industry.

Policy Boost

“The world is changing. National space agencies are no longer the sole space service providers. ISRO has been demonstrating its capabilities for years. We are now looking at how demonstrated capabilities can be monetised or handled in a more businesslike manner to create economies of scale for the space sector to grow. This is what government of India as well as our prime minister looked at when they announced space sector reforms,” says S. Somanath, chairman, ISRO and Space Commission, and secretary, Department of Space.

The reforms were not announced out of the blue. Long before giving private sector the green signal to participate in building satellites and launching rockets, government had undertaken a series of policy steps to create demand for satellite technologies. The result — a thriving user ecosystem of satellite services such as communications, navigation, agri-services and geo-mapping that made a business case for more satellites.

The current phase of reforms started in 2018 with government announcing a National Digital Communications Policy for strengthening satellite communication technologies. Its objectives were review of regulatory regime and development of an ecosystem for satellite communications. Flight and Maritime Connectivity Rules, 2018, came next. Drafts of space-based communications policy, remote sensing policy, humans in space policy, space transportation policy and satellite navigation policy are in various stages of finalisation.