Making the Indian LEO Space Station Exceptional

As India is a late entrant in human spaceflight programme, it will have to make up by partnering with countries outside China-US astropolitical blocs and give them access to its space station.

An Indian Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Space Station is not a dream of the distant future. By the 2030s, it could glean slightly above the blue skies at an altitude of 100-200 kilometers from Earth’s surface. India’s Geosynchronous Space Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV Mk III) and the currently under-design Unified Launch Vehicle (ULV) are preparing to ferry 'vyomanauts' and supply logistics to the Indian space station. The station could host numerous experiments, test, evaluate various prototype technologies, and carry out myriad space biology and space medicine evaluations. The opportunities with a space station are immense, but the real question is, will India put in efforts to make it as exceptional as possible?

The Indian LEO Space Station will emerge on the space scene in a decade when the LEO will teem with commercially-run space stations. The Chinese Large Modular Space Station would have also settled in orbit and gathered its international partners to join them on various missions onboard. The Chinese space diplomacy has already begun.

The China Manned Space Agency (CNSA) entered into an agreement with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs known as the United Nations/China Cooperation on the Utilization of the China Space Station under the aegis of the latter’s Access to Space for All Initiative. Through this joint initiative, nine experiments from scientific institutions worldwide, including the Indian Institute for Astrophysics, Bengaluru, and Indian Institute of Technology, Varanasi, have been selected to go onboard the Chinese space station.

The International Space Station will eventually accrue newer modules, which will replace some of the existing structure built by private space station module builder Axiom Space. Another private company, Bigelow Aerospace, is also advancing towards building a new space station in the LEO made from novel inflatable materials. These examples do not imply the end of multilateralism in terms of human spaceflight. The U.S.’ Donald Trump administration had secured partnerships from space agencies of Australia, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Japan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Ukraine, including the European Space Agency for its Artemis program. Through this program, these countries led by the U.S. aim to set up a space station in the orbit of the Moon, the first of its kind.

In the coming years, China and its partners, and the U.S. and its partners will compete in outer space, and space stations will be essential to their contest. In such a scenario, India must assess whether it will be able to rally potential partners for its space station. If yes, can it successfully attract those space agencies that their respective governments have tasked to align with Chinese and American plans? Secondly, India’s offer to attract partners and get financial assistance to upkeep the India-led space station should be such that the potential partners cannot refuse. To that extent, it becomes imperative for India’s space station strategy to be based on exceptionalism.

India is a late entrant in human spaceflight, and the time it has lost, if compared with China, Japan, France, Russia, and United States, cannot be compensated. India should not get bogged down by this fact but prepare to hit the ball outside the park. It should begin by partnering with countries that have stayed away from both the Chinese and American astropolitical blocs and providing the developing world nations – Africa, South America, Central Asia, South-East Asia, and Oceania – access to its space station.

The Indian government has capitalized on the loopholes exposed during the COVID-19 global pandemic to make tremendous reforms in the high-technology sectors. The Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) Schemes initiated by the Narendra Modi administration have catapulted the indigenization of a wide variety of products. These product categories are crucial for the transport, construction, operations, and refurbishment of the Indian space station.

For example, there is no apparent role for the Ministry of AYUSH, Department of Biotechnology, or Indian Council for Medical Research in the Indian space station program. However, India will have to utilize its immense know-how of agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and modern and traditional medicine and yoga to put together extensive space biology, space pharmaceuticals, space medicine, and vyomanaut training infrastructure. Moreover, India should attract experiments dealing with precision and high-throughput agriculture, space-based drug and medicine development, yoga, and pranayama from domestic institutions and international participants.

Where most of the space station-bearing countries and their partners have focused a lot on flaunting their technologies, India should focus on human-in-the-loop well-being. This person will be responsible for making humans interplanetary species. India should ensure that its space station program does not remain a technology demonstrator and a tick on the to-do list. There is tremendous value to garner from operating the space station.

Agriculture, medicine, medical devices, wearable technologies, holistic human health are bright spots of India’s innovation ecosystems. These, although not classically linked to the Indian space program, will eventually become important as human spaceflight pursuits of India mature. These bright spots will offer India the necessary exceptionality and spawn novel intellectual property that can ultimately commercialize. Furthermore, it is the PLI scheme and the larger drive for Aatmanirbhar Bharat that will catalyze the development of the Indian LEO Space Station (refer table). Greater emphasis on indigenization will be vital for preventing the space station meeting the same fate as our aerospace and space launch domains suffered for decades. The Indian LEO Space Station is not the only one that our country will build in this 21st century. We should aim to cultivate our private companies to occupy the LEO spot as the space agency graduates to build space stations on the Earth-Moon Lagrange point, in the lunar orbit, and eventually on Moon and Mars’s surface. For that, indigenization fortified with strong partnerships with other countries is a must.

This blog was published in the March 2021 edition of Science India magazine published by Vijnana Bharati.