A call to reenergise the Indian space ecosystem

The recent PSLV setback shines a light on bottlenecks plaguing India’s space programme and its potential debilitating impact on strategic choices

- Anshuman Narang

A deeper examination of the Indian space ecosystem reveals that India is gradually falling behind traditional space powers.

(AFP)

he failure of the PSLV-C62 launch is more than about the failure of a rocket or of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro).

This is the fifth Isro failure in the last seven years, but it should draw attention to wider problems disrupting the evolution of the Indian space domain asa national space power and asa combat force multiplier in the era of multi-domain operations.

Despite being the fourth-largest economy globally, a deeper examination of the Indian space ecosystem reveals that India is gradually falling behind traditional space powers, the US, China, Russia, EU and Japan, in all three areas of space —upstream, comprising satellite constellations, midstream, for fast paced space data aggregation, and downstream, that covers revenue generation. India's focus on prestige programmes like Gaganyaan may have actually triggered a fall in the country holding the highest global small satellite launch share of 35% in 2017 to zero in 2024.

Itwas the US' activation of Selective Availability of GPS signals during the Kargil War that pushed India to develop ‘NaviC, its own satellite navigation constellation. Since then, however, India has fallen behind. Despite the successful launch of Isro’s GSLV-F15 rocket in January 2025, an anomaly encountered in India’s second generation NavIC satellite NVS-02 prevented it from being placed inthe final orbit. Ofthe minimum seven NaviC satellites required, India today has only four fully functional onesand even out of these twoare nearing theend of their life.