IN-SPACe Funds Indigenous Satellite Buses to Crack Constellation Economics

India's space regulator is funding the least glamorous and most economically decisive part of a satellite: the bus it sits on. On 11 February 2026, IN-SPACe signed contracts with Dhruva Space, Astrome Technologies and Azista Industries under a Satellite Bus as a Service (SBaaS) program, awarding each firm ₹5 crore to develop modular, scalable small-satellite buses.

Why the bus is the bottleneck

A satellite bus is the platform everything else plugs into: structure, power, propulsion, attitude control, thermal management and communications that keep a payload alive and pointed. The payload gets the attention, but the bus is where reliability and cost are won or lost. For constellations, this is the central economic problem. Flying dozens or hundreds of satellites only pays if each bus is standardised, mass-producible and cheap. A bespoke platform built per mission cannot scale; a modular, repeatable one can.

By funding three firms to build exactly that, IN-SPACe is de-risking indigenous platform development at the point where constellation economics are decided. It also addresses import substitution. Indian operators have leaned on foreign buses or one-off domestic builds; a competitive home-grown modular platform keeps that value and supply security inside the country.

Dhruva's larger bet

Separately, Dhruva Space secured ₹105 crore (about $10.9 million) under the Centre's Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Fund for Project Garud, a 500 kg-class platform aimed at large-scale constellations. That is a heavier weight class than the small-sat buses, and the larger grant signals confidence in Dhruva as a platform leader. A 500 kg-class modular bus could anchor communications or Earth-observation constellations that need real power and payload per satellite.

The structure is the point. Rather than buying finished satellites, the government is financing the platform layer, the reusable foundation many future missions will share. The caveat is that these are development contracts, not proven flight hardware, and the buses must still show reliability and unit cost at production volume. But by targeting the platform rather than any single mission, India is investing where constellation economics actually break.