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IAC 2019 Washington DC

By Gurbir Dated: October 27, 2019 Leave a Comment

This year’s IAC conference attracted nearly 7000 visitors, exceeding the 6500 in Bremen last years. Two record-breaking years for the IAC in consecutive years. Many astronauts (including Mae Jamison, Charles Bolden, Sergei Krikalev, Oleg Kotov, Sandy Magnus, Jean-François Clervoy, André Kuipers, Buzz Aldrin) were present to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Apollo.

A couple of the themes that caught my eye included

  • Space Situational Awareness (SSA) – The precision (and thus the ability to detect potential collisions) of what is up there and where it exactly is, remains a concern. This will be exasperated with more space assets from emerging nations and the private sector in the coming decade. The mega-constellations will significantly add to the congestion.
  • Satelite Service and refuelling – Lots of new players are developing the early stages of solutions that will prolong the operational lifetime of the spacecraft by providing servicing and refuelling. The use of additive manufacture (3-D printing), automation based on Machine learning and neural networks are already being developed on earth and demonstrated in space.

A bit about the International Astronautical Congress. It was established in 1950 and its governing body, the International Astronautical Federation, in 1951. An annual international congress is held in a different country each year in October. Last year, IAC was held in Germany, next year it will be in Dubai, Paris in 2021 and Baku in Azerbaijan was announced as the host city for 2022. India, Brazil and Singapore had put in a submission for 2022.

The current IAF president Jean-Yves Le Gall has come to the end of his term and is handing over to Pascale Ehrenfreund. The IAF has several vice presidents including ISRO’s S. Somanath since 2018. His welcome address for 2019 is below.

China and Russia had a minimal representation at IAC2019. The programme and the exhibition list entities from China but were absent. It appears that the Chinese delegations were denied US visa at very short notice.

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Made-in-India – products for the global markets

By Gurbir Dated: October 26, 2019 Leave a Comment

A two-day summit called Spacetronix and Deftronix, organised by the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association in Bangalore attracted over 50 speakers, 45 exhibitors and 600 visitors. The first day, Spacetronics focused on India’s space sector and the second on defence – Deftronix. The key themes addressed the state of manufacturing of hardware, outsourcing and supply chain, a closer look at some successful space startups and the challenges of standards and security. 

The two-day event was extremely well organised and the venue, the Taj Yeshwantpur, met all the needs. It was disappointing that the organisers were left waiting by the tardy attendance by the keynote speaker, the first one on the second day. Being an industry centred event, many of the presentations involved major sponsors showcasing their products. Some of the speakers such as minister of state Dr. Jitendra Singh and DRDO chairman Dr. Satheesh Reddy did mot make an appearance but in both cases, their billing was subject to confirmation.

The first day focused on space. Representatives from a variety of Indian Space Research Organisation centres made presentations indicating their willingness to engage with the private sector to help meet their increasing capacity demands in avionics, semiconductors, 4th generation wifi products, digital receivers, high-speed data acquisition and playback, Field Programmable Gate Arrays, systems and cybersecurity. In addition to capacity building and reducing costs, ISRO was looking to the bourgeoning private space sector to introduce innovations in products design and manufacturing techniques.  

The general view from outside ISRO is that India’s space sector is dominated by its national space agency – The Indian Space Research Organisation. Private sector startups find it hard to overcome ISRO’s role as the primary producer, customer and regulator. The emerging space startups see ISRO as a gatekeeper restricting the commercial opportunities to new players. 

Gurvinder Singh
ISRO Semiconductor Laboratory in Punjab

Multinationals choose to setup manufacturing plants in China because, unlike India, China has an internal market for their products. India’s advantage, a cheap labour force, is offset by the need to export goods once they are made in India.

Challenges experienced by the private sector when working with ISRO included 

  • No single point of contact for initial registration by a private sector company
  • No support (risk sharing) for small companies that invest in prototyping as part of the bid-process
  • ISRO is a big organisation and currently has no template for interfacing with the private sector. 
  • Start-ups have to work work to ISRO’s methods and process which are not consistent.
  • Companies that work with ISRO IP tend to be favoured over those that  are offering independent products and services

The two-day event was supported by an exhibition where national and international companies showcased their products and services. Representatives from ISRO centres made presentations indicating their requirements for specific products and services to assist with capacity, cost or new innovative solutions. Whilst ISRO centres hold international industry standards such as ISO 9001 (Quality), AS9000 (Aerospace) and 14001 (Environment) but security standards such as ISO 27001 was conspicuous by its absence. This was especially striking since security was a major theme of the event.

In June 2019, India’s prime minister announced a new target of 5 trillion USD digital economy by 2024 from the current 2.8 trillion USD. Space and defence are two of the sectors where the digital economy will grow. Numerous former ISRO chairmen have announced initiatives to facilitate greater engagement with the private sector but engagement remains weak.

NASA has about as many employees as ISRO but 20 times the budget. Most of NASA’s budget is spent on outsourced projects. Although NASA was not explicitly cited, one theme was to learn from other countries on the benefits of outsourcing space projects. An interesting word used during an ISRO presentation was “Indeginization”. This was a reference to a desire for ISRO to make in-house components and systems that are currently imported or made by international manufacturers in India.

During the early 1990s, India’s went through an economic liberalisation that reduced the role of the government and attracted private and foreign investments. Millions of Indians benefited from easier, cheaper and faster access to private telephone lines, cars and household goods. The national economy has seen huge growth since. For India to achieve similar growth in the new strategic areas of space and defence, a similar liberalisation is required if the targets of the digital economy are to be met. One urgent step for the government is the needs to establish a space policy and publish a space bill that will allow the nascent Indian startups to flourish. 

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Episode 88 – India’s Private Space Sector

By Gurbir Dated: October 11, 2019 Leave a Comment

Narayan Prasad

No country has exploited space for social and economic benefits more than India. It has always been a government-run operation, until now.

As in other nations, the private space sector is emerging in India. One name that pops up when discussing private and commercial space in India is Narayanan Prasad. He has been instrumental in forging platforms where all stakeholders from the New Space Community can support each other and share views, opinions and news. The platforms include Whatsapp, Blog, Telegram and a New Space India Podcast.

In this episode, he recalls his journey so far and his part in his own start-up Satsearch.co as its COO. Here are some of the key takeaways from this interview


  • Most private sector players build products designed by ISRO under licence from ISRO. Private Space Sector in India is subject to excessive government bureaucracy preventing engagement from private investigators.
  • An independent regulator is needed. Independent regulator in telecommunication opened up the market for private telephone lines. An independent regulator for the private space sector is essential for this market to flourish.
  • NASA has created the Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) to engage the private space sector companies. India does not have anything equivalent.
  • This year ISRO established the New Space India Limited (NSIL). It was established to limit the potential impact of the Antrix/Devas case.
  • Policies exist in India for Communication and Remote Sensing but no overall policy for Space – yet. Although a draft Space bill was published in 2017 for comment. That bill drew a distinction between companies that work with ISRO and those outside ISRO.
  • Two of many space startups in India include 
    • Bellatrix Aerospace produces Ion engines for in-orbit spacecraft propulsion. Ion propulsion and reduce the spacecraft weight and extend the operational lifetime by about 60%
    • NoPo technologies are the only producer of Carbon Nanotubes in India. Like Graphene, Carbon Nanotube is an allotrope of Carbon. The unique properties include high tensile strength, electric and thermal conductivities.
  • Satsearch.co – now 3.5 years old based in the Netherlands and managed by a distributed team based in Germany, Netherlands, Italy and England.  Had it been based in India – it may have been subject to restrictions e.g queries coming in from Suparco in Pakistan.
  • As with any new emerging industry – most of the current space startups will cease to exist within 5-7 years from now.
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Space Museum at BM Birla Science Centre. Hyderabad

By Gurbir Dated: October 9, 2019 Leave a Comment

Pranav Sharma
Museum Curator

On 26 July 2019, India’s first public space museum opened its doors in Hyderabad. With support from ISRO, the 9000 sq ft is now devoted to pictures, models and stories about India’s space programme.

Billed as India’s first space museum but that title really goes to the VSSC Space Museum housed in St Mary Magdalene Church, in Thumba. It was the headquarters of was then known as INCOSPAR and became ISRO in 1969. This Church museum is located inside the sprawling Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, an operational ISRO site, so access to it is restricted and must be booked in advance.

The initial 24 exhibits in this new space museum include scale models of Indian Launch vehicles GSLV Mark III, GSLV Mark II and PSLV, Chandrayaan-1, Mars Orbiter spacecraft, APPLE, Aryabhata, Bhaskara, Rohini RS-1 and a model of the International Space Station.  

The exhibits were collected over two years by the curator, Pranav Sharma.  Sharma who is an engineer, a scientist, a TedX speaker and a science communicator has put together an attractive set of exhibits to inform, educate and entertain visitors of all ages about India’s space programme. This rich eclectic collection of exhibits includes lines from William Shakespeare, Dillon Thomas and even lyrics from a Coldplay track.

The new Space Museum inside the Birla Science Centre is open to the public and is first of a series that will be set up around India in the coming years. The museum doe not really have a website, other than this and the Birla Science Centre website does not give any prominence to this new resource. Despite the numerous compelling exhibits, the space museum lacks tactile and interactive exhibits that especially children are so fond of handling and engaging with.

Sharma offers a taste of the experience in this 40-minute youtube video, an online tour of the museum and invites visitors to come and visit in person.

A 40 minute Youtube video tour of the museum

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