India: 21st Century’s Newest Space Powerhouse
Space exploration has long been dominated by a very exclusive club of nations. The United States and the USSR/Russia have been leaders for more than 60 years, with the 21st century witnessing China become an unquestioned peer nation to these established space superpowers.
Europe and Japan have long been the solidified “second-tier” space powers, with no crewed programs of their own but hosting substantive domestic heavy launch capabilities and a proven ability to send missions beyond Earth’s orbit.
India has now entered the chat.
2023 may indeed be seen as the year that India “came out” as a major space powerhouse, capping decades of diligent work building up their domestic space capabilities. India has begun racking up unique and historic space achievements and there are even greater accomplishments on the horizon.
As India rises the ranks of global space powers, the geopolitical impacts of its space program will continue to grow, creating both opportunities and potential for conflict.
Regardless of how space exploration in the 21st century plays out, it is clear that India is now a major space powerhouse and is here to stay.
Decades of Perseverance Take India to the Moon & Beyond
The Indian space program is led by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), which was founded by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1962 as the Indian National Committee for Space Research. India’s first satellite, Aryabhata, was launched in April of 1975 from the Soviet Union.
Image of Aryabhata, India’s first domestically built satellite. Source: ISRO/NASA
In July of 1980 the RS-1 satellite was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on an island off of India’s east coast, making India the 7th nation in the world with domestic orbital launch capabilities. Since then, India has conducted 94 domestic launches and supported 125 spacecraft missions.
Rakesh Sharma became the first (and so far only) Indian citizen to visit space in 1984 when he spent more than 7 days aboard the Soviet Salyut 7 space station as part of the USSR’s Interkosmos program. Kalpana Chawla was an Indian-American astronaut who flew to space twice aboard NASA’s Columbia space shuttle, including its final fateful flight in 2003. She was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor for her sacrifice.
The Moon was one of the most significant early aims for the rising Indian space program. The Chandrayaan series of spacecraft have seen increasingly ambitious missions exploring our closest celestial neighbor.
Chandrayaan-1 launched in October 2008 where it spent two years orbiting the Moon with a suite of both Indian and international scientific instruments. The orbiter also released a small probe called the Moon Impact Probe that impacted near the lunar South Pole, making India just the fifth nation to reach the lunar surface.
Chandrayaan-2 launched in July 2019 after a series of delays and a failed partnership with Russia. The orbital insertion was successful, but the attempted soft landing with a separate probe was unsuccessful when communication was lost during descent. The orbiter continued to provide valuable science data from orbit.
Chandrayaan-3 was the mission that made headlines in 2023 for its ambitious and ultimately successful expedition to the regions near the lunar South Pole. This mission succeeded where Chandrayaan-2 had not, and on August 23, 2023 India became the 4th nation in history to soft-land a spacecraft on another celestial body.
The Vikram lander was not just a crowning technological achievement for India, it also served as a transport vessel for another significant milestone. The Pragyan rover could favorably be compared to NASA’s Mars Sojourner rover from the 1990s: a scrappy technology demonstration mission that captures the public eye and serves as a leading indicator for a new era of space exploration.
The mission received wide acclaim across the world, including in the US. Vice-President Harris tweeted that "It is an incredible feat for all the scientists and engineers involved. We are proud to partner with you on this mission and space exploration more broadly," (Source: Economic Times/India Times).
This is not the end of India’s lunar exploration efforts, either, with the ambitious Lunar Polar Exploration Mission (LUPEX) being developed with JAXA, the Japanese space agency. This mission will explore the lunar polar regions and has become part of NASA’s Moon exploration architecture due to its focus on studying lunar ice deposits.
India is also one of the few nations with a successful interplanetary mission in its repertoire. The 2013-2022 Mangalyaan Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) was a highly successful demonstration of India’s interplanetary prowess, making it the 4th nation at the time (after the US, USSR/Russia, and ESA) to successfully place a spacecraft into Mars orbit.
Additional Indian space missions around the inner Solar System are on the books for the 2020s. ISRO is developing a second Mars Orbiter Mission with an as yet undefined launch date, as well as a Venus mission unofficially named ‘Shukrayaan’ that is slated to launch in December of 2024.
It is also worth noting the significant cost efficiencies the India space program generates. Chandrayaan-3 cost only $75 million dollars, a fraction of what similar programs from the US, Russia, and China cost (in adjusted dollars). For years India has been noted for operating successfully on much lower budgets than major space powers, and Prime Minister Modi once celebrated the launch of four satellites that were cheaper to launch than the cost of filming the movie Gravity.
There is also a rapidly growing private space economy in India that could soon become a major player in the global space ecosystem. According to the Economic Times, there are now “190 Indian space start-ups, twice as many as a year earlier, with private investments jumping by 77 percent between 2021 and 2022, according to Deloitte consultancy.”
The Indian space program has notched a number of impressive accomplishments in recent decades, which has laid the groundwork for even more impressive growth in the years ahead.
US-India Space Relationship Primed for Growth
The United States and India have partnered in space exploration for decades, with the US playing a role in the first sounding rockets launched from India back in 1963. The US-India Civil Space Joint Working Group was formed in 2005 to expand co-operation in civilian space exploration efforts between the two nations. In 2023 the initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) was announced between the two countries, and included a series of important space sector proposals focused on planetary defense, STEM education, and training an Indian astronaut at NASA in preparation for a mission to the International Space Station.
The group has met eight times in the years since and includes a range of government officials on both sides. The latest meeting took place in January 2023 and was attended by a wide array of US government agencies including the US Commerce Department, which touted the potential to grow the US and Indian space economies.
Cooperation between NASA and ISRO continues to deepen. A NASA component was even a part of the Chandrayaan-3 mission. The jointly-developed NISAR mission is scheduled to launch in 2024 and will see each nation develop different radars to offer unprecedented details about changes to Earth’s surface. It is also a sign of the deepening technical cooperation between the two space agencies.
It’s also important to note the unique role Vice-President Kamala Harris plays in Indian-American space relations. She is the highest ranking Indian-American politician in US history while serving as the Chairwoman of the National Space Council in her capacity as Vice-President. Harris was also among the prominent US politicians to congratulate India on the success of Chandrayaan-3. She also named Amazon Vice-President and prominent Indian-American, Rajeev Badyal, to the National Space Council’s Users Advisory Group.
The United States and India have cooperated in space exploration since the dawn of the Space Age. As this critical relationship deepens, it will shape the global dynamics that govern international space politics and policymaking for years to come.
Signing Artemis Accords A Significant Shift for India
The Artemis Accords are a set of international multilateral agreements outlining the core principles regarding the rights, responsibilities, and behavior of spacefaring nations. The Accords are spearheaded by the US and NASA, and as of this writing have been signed by 29 nations or territories with a 30th signatory imminent. This includes the advanced spacefaring nations of Japan, Italy, the UK, Germany, France, Brazil, along with a growing list of secondary powers such as the Netherlands. These nations participate (to varying degrees) in NASA’s crewed Artemis program that aims to eventually return humanity to the Moon.
Map of Artemis Accords signatory nations as of October 8th, 2023. Source: Mapchart.net & Wikimedians.
In June 2023 India signed the Accords and joined this global space alliance, a major diplomatic move for India and one of the most consequential expansions for the Accords since they were unveiled in 2020.
As a rising space power with a long history of non-alignment in international affairs, it was long uncertain if India would drift towards the US, Russia, or China in space affairs, or simply chart their own path. By signing the Accords India takes a step in the direction of the US and gains access to greater technical cooperation and insights not just from NASA but all of the Artemis partners.
Indian Ambassador Taranjit Sandhu, signs the Artemis Accords, as U.S. Department of State, Deputy Assistant Secretary for India, Nancy Jackson, left, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, and Indian Space Research Organization, Space Counsellor, Krunal Joshi, right, look on, June 21 2023. Source/Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls.
This move has not gone unnoticed around the world. China was sure to call out technical and linguistic clarifications that the Vikram rover did not actually land at the Lunar South Pole, a move that could be seen as a snide and churlish response from a nation worried about India’s rise in space. China is a rapidly rising space power that is building their own international coalition to explore the Moon. While India joining China in space would have been unlikely, they most certainly are not happy India has signed up to the Artemis Accords.
India and China have a complex and often adversarial relationship that includes a series of deadly border clashes, with significant skirmishes occurring as recently as December 2022. If earthly relations between the two nuclear powers deteriorate, that could easily ricochet into conflict in space domains as well.
India has also demonstrated its ability to project military power in space, conducting an anti-satellite test in 2019 that proved their technological prowess while drawing condemnation from numerous countries, including the United States.
Yet as of right now, any claim of a “space race” between the two Asian superpowers is premature. China’s program is still far more advanced than India’s, and the 2023 launch volume statistics (pictured below) bear that out. China still puts considerably more mass into space every year than India, to say nothing of the fact that China’s space budget is six times as large as India’s. Until these numbers are near parity, talk of a “space race” will remain hyperbole.
Source: John Holst, Ill-Defined Space.
Signing the Artemis Accords was heralded in India and across the world as a significant step towards defining the norms of the New Space Age, but this move was not without risks. As the scale and scope of the Indian space program increases, those geopolitical calculations will only grow more important.
Crewed Missions Next Major Threshold
The ultimate accomplishment of any nation's space program is the indigenous ability to launch their own astronauts into space. Crossing this threshold brings a nation in line with leading space powers like the US, China, and Russia and can be a significant source of national pride.
India’s crewed Gaganyaan program (Sanskrit for “celestial vehicle”) has been in development for years and recently unveiled some significant progress. According to the ISRO “(The) Gaganyaan project envisages demonstration of human spaceflight capability by launching crew of 3 members to an orbit of 400 km for a 3 days mission and bring them back safely to earth, by landing in Indian sea waters,” (Source: ISRO).
Indian’s human-rated Gaganyaan capsule, slated for a crewed test launch in December, 2024. Source: NDTV.com & ISRO
The capsule will launch on the aptly named Human-rated Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (HLVM-3). This rocket has been in service since 2017 and launched both Chandrayaan-2 and Chandrayaan-3, as well as a recent batch of satellites for OneWeb. The vehicle is set to conduct the first official Gagayaan test flight on October 21st, 2023, another historic marker on India’s quest to launch humans into space.
Configuration of the crew-rated HLVM-3 that will carry the first Indian astronauts launched from Indian soil into space. Source: ISRO.
Even further down the line after a series of flights with Gaganyaan would be the development of an Indian space station. Such a project wouldn’t even be on the horizon until the 2030s, but the fact that it is under serious discussion within ISRO demonstrates the full ambition of the Indian space program.
Exciting Next Chapter for Indian Space Exploration
India is perhaps the fastest rising space power in the world right now and appears to be on the cusp of some truly historic accomplishments. After decades of building up their capabilities, India has now soft landed on the Moon, gone to Mars, and is on the verge of becoming just the fourth nation in history to launch humans into space.
Yet there is still more room for growth. India spends just 0.04% of its GDP on space exploration and lags behind many major space powers, which perhaps explains the track record of low-cost missions. Raising this total further would enable a higher launch cadence and expand the scope of missions the ISRO is able to undertake.
Source: CNBC
India’s current accomplishments have already been enough to inspire the entire nation and build up an immense groundswell of support for space exploration across India.
Huge crowds gather to watch the launch of Chandrayaan-3. Source: India Today.
It is clear that India’s space program is on the rise, perhaps rising faster than any other nation on Earth. Decades of persistence have paid off.
India is now a major player in the global space ecosystem. Advanced missions to the Moon, interplanetary probes, a human program on the verge of success, a rapidly growing private sector, and a nation inspired to cheer along the entire time.
When it comes to space exploration in the 21st century, it is clear that India is the world’s newest space powerhouse.
Patrick Chase is a space writer, political junkie, and lifelong space enthusiast.
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