Date: 11/04/2023

Relevance: GS-3: Science and Technology- Developments and their Applications and Effects in Everyday Life; Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers etc.

Key Phrases: Space Age, Sputnik , Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Aeronautical Test Range, NASA, GSLV, PSLV, Aditya L1.

Context:

• Globally the beginning of the Space Age is considered around 1957 with the launch of satellite Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union as part of the Soviet space program during the cold war era.
  • Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the world’s first person in space in 1961.
  • Neil Armstrong made history by walking on the moon in 1969.
• Though there is no precise date for the beginning of the second space age, the origins of the Second Space Age can be traced to the Internet.

Key Highlights:

• Between the 1950s to 1991, a period dominated by the Cold War, 60 to 120 space launches took place annually and 93% of these were by the United States and the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) governments.
  • Three decades later, there are not only many more actors in the space scene, but a majority are also private companies.
  • Last year, there were 180 rocket/space launches, 61 by SpaceX (Private company); 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.
• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was set up in 1969.
  • It 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.
• Through these decades, it has sought to prioritise societal objectives and benefits.
  • Its first major project was Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) that involved leasing a U.S. satellite in 1975-76 for educational outreach across 2,400 villages covering five million people.
  • Satellite technology was a new mass communication tool.
  • This led to the INSAT series in the 1980s, followed by GSAT, that provided the backbone for the country’s tele-communication and broadcasting infrastructure.
  • This was followed by remote sensing capability development.
    • The use of space-based imagery for weather forecasting, resource mapping of forests, analyzing agricultural yields, groundwater and watersheds, gradually expanded to cover fisheries and urban management.
  • The field of satellite-aided navigation emerged later.
    • 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).
• In parallel came the development of 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.
• 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.
• The last 15 years witnessed another transformation, and this time India was in lockstep with the developed world.
  • 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.

Potential of Space Sector:

• In 2020, the global space economy was estimated at $450 billion, growing to $600 billion by 2025.
• The Indian space economy, estimated at $9.6 billion in 2020, is expected to be $13 billion by 2025.
• However, the potential is much greater with an enabling policy and regulatory environment.
  • The Indian space industry could easily exceed $60 billion by 2030, directly creating more than two lakh jobs.
  • The reason is that in terms of the end-user revenue, only a fifth 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%.
  • In terms of space activities, downstream activities such as satellite services and associated ground segment are dominant, accounting for over 70% of India’s space economy; upstream activities of satellite manufacturing and launch services contribute the smaller share.
  • A similar trend can be seen in developed countries.
    • The reason is that India has been an early adopter of digital app-based services.
• The growing role of the private sector is also evident in the numbers and ownership of satellites.
• How this domain will be regulated is a separate challenge, but this provides a glimpse of the scope of expansion.

Creating an Enabling Environment:

• The 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 today.
  • 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.
• Today, ISRO manages 53 operational satellites – 21 for communication, 21 for earth observation, eight for navigation and the remaining as scientific experimental satellites.
  • In addition, 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, for some private sector companies, space technology-related work is a small part of their revenue stream.
  • They were content as vendors, producing to defined specs and designs.
• The revenue stream of startups 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 an incubator.
  • It 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.
• To tap the opportunity in a better manner, the Indian government has also been mulling over this.
  • There has been talk of commercializing the PSLV and SSLV launch services and NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) was set up in 2019.
  • The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe) was set up in 2020 as a single-window-clearance for the private sector.
  • An Indian Space Association (ISpA) was created as an industry association.

Need of Hour:

• In recent years, a series of policy papers have been circulated for discussion- a satcom/telecom policy, an earth observation policy and a foreign direct investment policy.
  • But there is a need for legislation (a space activities act) for providing the legal grounding that policy papers lack; helping to set up a regulatory authority and creating an enabling environment for raising venture capital funding into the Indian space start-up industry.

Conclusion

• The window of opportunity for India to join the Second Space Age exists and it should not be lost at any cost.

Source: The Hindu

Mains Question:

Q. In the Indian context, discuss the potential of the space sector and its associated issues. Also, suggest some measures to address these issues. (250 Words).