India’s space strategy: data and tiny satellitesBy leveraging its tech start-up culture, India can become a key player in outer spaceBy Nivedita Bhattacharjee / Reuters, BENGALURUIndia has a plan to carve out a beachhead in the battle for commercial space, officials say: crunching space data, building small satellites and launching them cheaply into orbit, rather than challenging heavyweights such as SpaceX head-on. Illustration: Mountain People“The world has gone from satellites the size of a Boeing plane to the size of a laptop,” Indian Space Association director-general Anil Kumar Bhatt said. Indian companies such as Bellatrix Aerospace, Pixxel, Agnikul Cosmos, Dhruva Space and others are already building, or have launched, small satellites or satellite components. India’s space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), last month completed the third and final developmental flight for its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle. The space downstream market is, at the end of the day, a software play,” Terrawatch Space founder Aravind Ravichandran said.
