Indian startups making their mark in space

Dinesh C Sharma

Science Commentator

THIS week, India’s spaceport at Sriharikota will witness the launch of the country’s first fully-private rocket. So far, privately-built satellites have been launched using rockets of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) such as the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The rocket, ‘Vikram-S’, named after the founder of the national space programme, Vikram Sarabhai, has been designed, developed and fabricated at Skyroot Aerospace in Hyderabad. The sub-orbital flight of ‘Vikram-S’ is a developmental mission designed to validate launch-vehicle technologies and prepare for a commercial launch the next year.

Skyroot is a startup founded barely five years ago by Pawan Chandana (alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur) and Bharath Daka, a graduate from IIT, Madras, who had worked for some time with the ISRO. Within four years, the company could develop a liquid-propulsion engine, a 3D printed cryogenic engine and a solid rocket stage. The plan is to develop a series of modular launch vehicles suited for launching small satellites. Skyroot says it wants to make satellite launches as quick, precise and affordable as booking a cab through a mobile app. There can be ride-share options too, to accommodate several customers in one launch.

The private space industry in India is bubbling with activity, with the national space agency handholding private efforts. Another startup, Agnikul Cosmos based in Chennai, is also developing a launch vehicle — ‘Agnibaan’ — and hopes to test-flight it before the year ends. For this, the ISRO recently provided the company with a critical subsystem, the flight termination system which it has been using for its launch vehicles. Agnikul recently tested its semi-cryogenic engine ‘Agnilet’ at the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station in Thiruvananthapuram. In Bengaluru, Bellatrix incubated at the Indian Institute of Science is fast-expanding its engine development activities. It is engaged in the development of propulsion systems. The company has already come up with mono-propellant thrusters, green propellants and electric thrusters, and is collaborating with the state government to establish a space factory in Bengaluru to make electric propulsion systems and orbital transfer vehicles.

All these developments may give the impression that the private sector’s involvement in the space sector is new and that the ISRO has been working in isolation till now. It is not so. It is the culmination of technological and industrial capabilities, carefully built over decades, both within the ISRO and outside it.

Space is a knowledge and capital-intensive business. To succeed in this sector, one needs highly qualified scientists and engineers, skilled and experienced technicians for design, development fabrication, quality assurance and ground testing. Apart from rockets and satellites, a whole range of auxiliary services and facilities are needed — launching pads, control rooms, telemetry, tracking, data reception systems and so on. All this calls for industrial expertise in aerospace, avionics, materials, chemicals and other sectors. None of this industrial expertise existed when the Indian space programme was launched with ambitious goals. Scientists at the ISRO had to fabricate and manufacture everything in-house in the initial years. This had to change as the programme expanded from the experimental to the operational stage in the 1970s and 1980s.

Leaders of the space programme like Satish Dhawan recognised early on that India needed to develop an industrial base if it had to grow rapidly in this sector. While the launch of the first rocket, SLV, was being planned, Dhawan sent SLV project director APJ Abdul Kalam on a nationwide tour to identify industries that can be prepared for the space programme. He identified some 250 units, which could potentially make space-grade components, subsystems, electronics, propellants etc.

Each ISRO centre had a set of industries with which it worked. Technology was transferred to small and medium enterprises for production. For instance, the ISRO Satellite Centre, which develops satellites, worked with some 30 public and private sector organisations. The Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, which develops rockets, worked with 45 industries in the 1970s. The relationship with the industry was not just that of vendor-supplier, but the ISRO worked with the private industry to develop the industrial infrastructure necessary for space requirements. It established in-house facilities only in critical areas and where external capability could not be developed.

Along with technology transfer, the ISRO also encouraged scientists who wanted to become entrepreneurs and act as vendors for it. For instance, Pavuluri Subba Rao quit the National Remote Sensing Centre in Hyderabad in the early 1990s to start Ananth Technologies for making electronics engineering systems and other subsystems for the ISRO. Over the years, it has participated in almost every mission of the space agency, including the mission to Mars. Larsen & Toubro, which has been a major supplier for the ISRO’s rocket programme, has now tied with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to independently manufacture PSLV. Godrej and Boyce and Walchandnagar Industries have also been working with the PSLV programme for long. There are several such examples in defence production too, as many systems are common to missile and space programmes.

As a result of sustained engagement with the industry over the decades and aggressive technology transfer, the private sector developed expertise and capability in subsystems, components, electronics, etc. This also resulted in the availability of a pool of experienced manpower in the private industry, research laboratories and academic institutions such as IITs. These two critical inputs — an industrial base and availability of technical manpower — coupled with access to funding through venture capital route are driving space startups. These companies are making use of emerging technologies such as additive manufacturing, ultra-miniaturisation of satellites, smart propulsion, 5G communication, big data and Internet of Things. On top of it, the startups have a vast market to tap into and are not dependent only on the ISRO. Globally, there is a shift from large satellites to small and microsatellites in a constellation approach. Over the next five years, an estimated 60,000 such satellites will be launched. Indian space companies are looking to get a share of this market — from designing satellites to launching them. 

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