Strengthen space reforms for this sector to attain lift-off

Context: Recently, the Department of Space (DoS) pledged to allow home-grown space companies access to Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO’s) cutting-edge laboratories and hardware testing infrastructure.

Democratization of near-earth space:

• Countries, including Bangladesh, Luxembourg, Australia, New Zealand and the UAE, have created space programmes
• Contest for low-cost space-launch vehicles: between Germany and U.K
• The democratization is accelerating the marriage of Industry 4.0 technologies to the space sector, leading to a Second Space Age!

 Challenges of Indian space industry:

• Inadequate protection to domestic startups by Department of Space (DoS): While the DoS has been nurturing private sector firms (employing them as vendors), it does not provide precautionary measures to deal with their success or foreign competition.
• Near absence of domestic financing entities: preventing the startups from acquiring big SpaceX-like valuations. Most are pre-seed and seed-stage players, investing below $2 million.
• Economic upheaval of the covid pandemic and China’s intensified techno-political ambitions:
  • May lead to the acquiring of stakes of space startups in India by the foreign investors—a potential national security hazard.
  • E.g. Germany recently blocked the acquisition of domestic satellite and critical technology manufacturer from China.

 Way forward:

• Constitute an inter-ministerial cabinet committee on futuristic science and technologies (CCFST), which includes the DoS:
  • It should ensure that the country’s space sector is with predominantly Indian capital.
  • It can be tasked with vetting foreign direct investment, creating a clear regulatory environment, and crafting future-ready industrial, financial and security policies.
  • Maintain national security-oriented vigil: to ward off takeovers in India’s fledgeling space sector.
• Ensuring comprehensive government-military-finance-technology-policy and industrial complex: which can leapfrog the country to a future of 21st-century industrialization.

Conclusion: Space sector is like the divine wish-fulfilling tree Kalpavriksha of Indian legend.

• Every minute mechanical component, every microelectronic element, and every drop of fuel that emanates from the space sector must find utility across non-space industries.
• Many of these could be enablers of incremental but vital innovations that will eventually assist India’s socio-economic upliftment.