India's space strategy: Harness data and tiny satellites

BENGALURU - India has a plan to carve out a beachhead in the battle for commercial space, officials say: crunching space data, building small satellites and launching them cheaply into orbit rather than challenging heavyweights such as SpaceX head-on.

- REUTERS

In particular, it is taking aim at providing cost-effective services and hardware to sectors such as communications, agriculture and commodities, where high-quality data is a precious resource.

At stake is a launch market worth US$14.54 billion (S$19 billion) by 2031, and a related data services market pegged at US$45 billion by 2030.

“The world has gone from satellites the size of a Boeing plane to the size of a laptop,” said Mr A.K. Bhatt, director-general of the Indian Space Association, an industry body.

“This is a sector that India can win, instead of challenging heavy launches where (SpaceX founder) Elon Musk has dominance. The country already has a historical advantage in data mining and interpretation.”

Since February, India has opened its space sector to private players and created a 10 billion rupee (S$155 million) venture fund to support space start-ups. It has also unveiled plans for crewed space exploration and a mission to Venus, but the focus is on developing commercial ventures.

In many ways, it will be an uphill fight. Other countries such as Japan and China have advanced space industries, and designs on cheap launches.