• First space age began in 1957 with the launch of satellite Sputnik 1, and in 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the world’s first person in space.
• Neil Armstrong made history by walking on the moon in 1969.
• Between the 1950s to 1991, 60 to 120 space launches took place annually.
•  93% of these were by US and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR).
• Three decades later, there are not only many more governments in the space scene, but a majority are also private companies.
• Example: In 2022, there were 180 rocket/space launches, 61 by Elon Musk’s Space X.
• 90% of global space launches since 2020 are by and for the private sector.

India’s space journey

• India made a modest entry into the First Space Age in the 1960s.
• The first sounding rocket, a U.S.-supplied Nike Apache, was launched at Thumba (Kerala) in 1963.
• Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was set up in 1969.
• ISRO has come a long way since, with over 15,000 employees and an annual budget between ₹12,000 crore-₹14,000 crore in recent years.
• Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE): ISRO’s first major project was Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) which involved leasing a U.S. satellite in 1975-76 for educational outreach across 2,400 villages covering five million people.
• Telecommunications and broadcasting: Satellite technology was a new mass communication tool. This led to the INSAT series in the 1980s, followed by GSAT, which provided the backbone for the country’s telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructure.
• Remote sensing capability development: Use of space-based imagery for weather forecasting, resource mapping of forests, and analyzing agricultural yields, groundwater, and watersheds, gradually expanded to cover fisheries and urban management.
• Satellite-aided navigation: It began with GAGAN, a joint project between ISRO and the Airports Authority of India, to augment Global Positioning System (GPS) coverage of the region, to improve air traffic management over Indian airspace.
• • This has now been expanded to a regional navigation satellite system called Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC).
• Satellite launch capabilities: Beginning with the SLV-1 in the 1980s, it took a decade before ISRO developed the PSLV series that has become its workhorse with over 50 successful launches.

Potential of the space industry

• The origins of the Second Space Age can be traced to the Internet.
• In India, the process began accelerating as the 1990s saw the emergence of private TV channels, together with cable TV followed by direct-to-home transmissions.
• The demand for satellite transponders and ground-based services exploded.
• Today, more than half the transponders beaming into Indian homes are on foreign satellites.
• India was in lockstep with the developed world for the last 15 years.
• The age of mobile telephony, followed by smartphones has shown the world what a data-hungry and data-rich society India is.
• Broadband, OTT, and now 5G promise a double-digit annual growth in demand for satellite-based services.

Space Economy

• In 2020, the global space economy was estimated at $450 billion, growing to $600 billion by 2025.
• Indian space economy: estimated at $9.6 billion in 2020, is expected to be $13 billion by 2025.
• It could easily exceed $60 billion by 2030, directly creating more than two lakh jobs.

Reasons behind potential growth

• In terms of end-user revenue, only a 5^th 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%).
• 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.

Growing role of the private sector

• Role of the private sector is evident in the numbers and ownership of satellites.
• There are 8,261 satellites in orbit, of which nearly 5,000 are active.
• Till 2010, about 60 to 100 satellites were launched annually.
• In 2020, 1,283 satellites were launched.
• Starlink operates a constellation of over 3,500 satellites and has a million paying customers.
• Both Starlink and OneWeb (in which Airtel has a stake) project constellations of 40,000 satellites each.
• Amazon has launched Project Kuiper to bring low-latency broadband connectivity around the globe.

Potential of the Indian Space Industry

• 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 over 100 now.
• The pace of investment is growing. From $3 million in 2018, it doubled in 2019 and crossed $65 million in 2021.
• The sector is poised for take-off — as a transformative growth multiplier like the IT industry did for the national economy in the 1990s.

ISRO and private sector

• ISRO manages four to five launches annually.
• It manages 53 operational satellites: 21 for communication, 21 for earth observation, 8 for navigation, and the remaining as scientific experimental satellites.
• China operates 541.
• ISRO has missions such as Chandrayaan, Mangalyaan, and Gaganyaan (manned space mission).
• ISRO has always been an open organization that has worked closely with the Indian private sector.
• However, some private sector companies’ content as vendors, producing to defined specs and designs.

ISRO and Indian Space Startups

• Their revenue stream depends on space-related activities and they need a different relationship with ISRO and the government.
• ISRO today is the operator, user, service provider, licensor, rule maker, and also incubator.
• ISRO has steered India through the First Space Age and needs to do what it can do best now within its resources and its high-quality manpower — research.

Government’s efforts

• 2017: the government introduced the first draft Space Activities Bill in Parliament but it lapsed in 2019.
• There has been talk of commercializing the PSLV and SSLV launch services.
• NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) was set up to replace Antrix.
• IN-SPACe: the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre was set up in 2020 as a single-window-clearance for the private sector.
• However, it is unclear whether it will emerge as the licensing authority or a regulator.
• ISpA: An Indian Space Association (ISpA) was created as an industry association.

India needs legislation (a space activities act), which provides legal grounding for satcom/telecom policy, an earth observation policy, and a foreign direct investment policy. It should help to set up a regulatory authority and create an enabling environment for raising venture capital funding into the Indian space start-up industry.