Satellites, space missions, aerospace technology, and space exploration
French space company U-Space and Bengaluru's AXISCADES have signed a commercial cooperation agreement to jointly pursue India's microsatellite market, one of three India-France private space deals struck at the Paris International Space Summit.
Manik Gupta
Author
The launch-services agreement covers mission management for two spacecraft in the Hyderabad company’s planned orbital-computing constellation. It is a future deployment commitment, not evidence that the network is operating.
Manik Gupta
Author
The Chennai expansion addresses ground testing and manufacturing needed for future reusable vehicles. It does not establish that Agnikul has recovered or reflown a stage.
Manik Gupta
Author
ISRO’s September 6 statement rules out privatisation and retains government control of critical infrastructure. Programme-level transition arrangements still need scrutiny.
Manik Gupta
Author
Space Angel has named Inbound Aerospace among its new spacecraft re-entry partners. The agreement creates a development route, while the proposed Australian spaceports remain at the assessment and planning stage.
Manik Gupta
Author
US patent 12,516,926 B2 documents GalaxEye’s approach to matching data from multiple sensors. Its January grant predates September’s coverage; the key engineering issue is alignment, not a patent proving performance.
Manik Gupta
Author
The Series C backs Honeybee satellites, Aurora software and manufacturing capacity, with the first Honeybee launch targeted for 2027.
Manik Gupta
Author
ISRO’s September 5 test ran the power head at the stated 200-tonne level for five seconds. The hardware excludes the thrust chamber, making this a propulsion-development milestone rather than a flight-ready engine demonstration.
Manik Gupta
Author
ISRO's GSLV-F17 placed the 2,367-kg EOS-05 satellite into a higher-than-planned geosynchronous transfer orbit on September 4, redeeming the GSLV family after the 2021 loss of its predecessor and setting up a packed launch calendar toward Gaganyaan.
Manik Gupta
Author
Bengaluru's Kepler Aerospace has closed its first-ever external funding round to launch six swarming ISR satellites under two Ministry of Defence iDEX contracts.
Manik Gupta
Author
IIT Bombay-incubated satellite-servicing startup InspeCity has raised ₹100 crore to fund flight qualification and four in-orbit missions over the next 12 to 18 months.
Manik Gupta
Author
IN-SPACe Chairman Pawan Goenka has confirmed that ISRO will exit rocket manufacturing entirely, handing PSLV, LVM3 and SSLV production to private industry as India targets a $44 billion space economy by 2033 -- a move former ISRO chief G. Madhavan Nair has publicly questioned.
Manik Gupta
Author
ISRO has developed, tested and qualified the core systems needed to human-rate Gaganyaan — from the HLVM3 launch vehicle's propulsion stages to the crew-escape motors and life-support hardware — the government told the Rajya Sabha, as the first uncrewed flight is targeted for Q4 2026.
Manik Gupta
Author
Prime Minister Narendra Modi met founders and CEOs of 20 Indian space startups at Seva Teerth on August 21, urging them to widen space tech's real-world applications as he pitched India as a future global hub for space talent and investment.
Manik Gupta
Author
Vijayawada-based Red Balloon Aerospace flew India's first indigenous super-pressure stratospheric balloon in May and is now racing to build HELIX, a persistent stratospheric airship pitched as a cheaper, reusable alternative to satellites and ground towers.
Manik Gupta
Author
Union Minister Jitendra Singh told Parliament on 13 August 2026 that Indian private companies plan two commercial launches in FY 2026-27 and more than six in FY 2027-28 — the first time the government has quantified private orbital activity beyond a single mission.
Manik Gupta
Author
ISRO will return to flight in early September 2026 with GISAT-1A (EOS-05), an Earth-observation satellite launching on a GSLV, ending a near seven-month launch pause and replacing the geo-imaging satellite lost in 2021.
Manik Gupta
Author
At the National Space Technology Conclave 2026, held 17–18 August at Chandigarh University, ISRO scientists laid out the technologies they expect to define India's future spacecraft — on-board AI and machine learning, quantum-secured communications, and inter-satellite links. The gathering drew some 30 mission leaders from ISRO, IN-SPACe, NSIL and URSC, plus ten space-industry chiefs.
Manik Gupta
Author
GalaxEye has acquired Bengaluru spacecraft-engineering firm StarOps, bringing qualified satellite bus platforms and a TeamIndus-rooted engineering team in-house as it moves from its OptoSAR demonstrator toward a full Earth-observation constellation. Deal value was not disclosed.
Manik Gupta
Author
ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan says India will launch at least 300 satellites over the next five to six years — a task set by the Prime Minister — while targeting its own Bharatiya Antariksh Station by 2035 and an uncrewed Gaganyaan flight before the end of 2026.
Manik Gupta
Author
Weeks after Vikram-1 became India's first privately built rocket to reach orbit, Skyroot Aerospace has signed a three-launch agreement with small-satellite firm HEX20 for Earth-observation and demo missions on its Vikram series from late 2027 — an early sign the maiden flight is converting into commercial demand.
Manik Gupta
Author
A Pixxel-led consortium of four Indian space firms — Allied Orbits — has won an IN-SPACe public-private partnership to build, own and operate India's first privately led national Earth-observation constellation: 12 satellites, over ₹1,200 crore, all made and operated in India.
Manik Gupta
Author
ISRO has ground-tested a redesigned first-stage solid booster for its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle, trimming the stage's mass and simplifying its manufacture as the agency prepares to hand the small rocket to private industry.
Manik Gupta
Author
IN-SPACe has invited private Indian firms to operate India's second spaceport, the small-satellite launch complex being built at Kulasekarapattinam — the first time the country has offered to hand day-to-day operation of a launch site to a commercial operator.
Manik Gupta
Author
Bengaluru startup Astrobase has unveiled EVEREST, an 800 kN liquid-oxygen/methane engine it says is India's first privately built full-flow staged combustion rocket engine, with a full-scale hot-fire test planned for later in 2026 and a maiden orbital flight targeted for 2028.
Manik Gupta
Author
India's space agency carried out 29 collision-avoidance manoeuvres over the past 18 months to protect its satellites from debris, the government told the Lok Sabha on 5 August 2026 — with 20 of India's 22 active low-Earth-orbit satellites now flagged for heightened collision risk.
Manik Gupta
Author
London-listed Seraphim Space Investment Trust has deployed a further $25 million into Pixxel, the India-founded hyperspectral imaging company, as part of a $28.6 million allocation from its C-share raise — a follow-on that underscores Pixxel's role in building India's sovereign Earth-observation infrastructure, including the 12-satellite national constellation it is leading for IN-SPACe.
Manik Gupta
Author
Hyderabad startup TakeMe2Space says its PowerBank-50 has become India's first commercially available, off-the-shelf satellite battery proven in space, after powering a payload at 450 km on Skyroot's Vikram-1. The ₹1,04,900 pack packs over 50 Wh into 380 grams.
Manik Gupta
Author
Deep-tech VC Abyro Capital and Hyderabad's T-Hub have launched Beacon, a spacetech platform that will back five early-stage (TRL 2-4) startups with US$500,000 each plus an eight-week accelerator, targeting the scarce first-cheque funding for hardware-heavy space ventures.
Manik Gupta
Author
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ISRO has completed the Baseline Design Review and systems engineering of BAS-01, the first module of the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, releasing 31 baseline design documents and beginning subsystem design and prototype hardware development. The first module is targeted for a 2028 launch on the LVM3, with the full station planned by 2035.
Manik Gupta
Author
IN-SPACe has published India's first authorisation framework for planned atmospheric re-entry, requiring operators to keep ground-casualty risk below 1-in-10,000 and accept no-fault liability — arriving just as Agnikul Cosmos readies India's first ocean booster-recovery attempt on Mission-02.
Manik Gupta
Author
India's space regulator IN-SPACe has issued more than 130 authorisations and the private space sector has crossed 450 startups, with private investment topping $618.5 million since the 2020 reforms, official figures show.
Manik Gupta
Author
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India''s private space-technology startups have raised a record $871 million across 241 rounds, a Tracxn report says, as Skyroot''s Vikram-1 orbital success reshapes investor sentiment. Bengaluru alone accounts for more than half of all capital raised.
Manik Gupta
Author
IIT Madras-incubated The ePlane Company has unveiled the first full-scale prototype of its e200X electric air taxi at a new Chennai facility, with certified flight testing targeted for 2027.
Manik Gupta
Author
IIT-Madras-incubated startup D-Propulse has advanced its rotating detonation engine with an aerospike nozzle to TRL-5, sustaining 5 kN of thrust in tests at a DRDO facility — a step towards efficient propulsion for missiles, drones and reusable launch systems.
Manik Gupta
Author
ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan says the agency is targeting seven launches this financial year, with the next mission due within two months, two satellites already built and a second spaceport at Kulasekharapatnam nearing commissioning.
Manik Gupta
Author
Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 reached a ~450 km orbit on 18 July 2026, making it the first privately developed Indian rocket to reach space and India the third country with private orbital launch capability. Mission Aagaman carried CubeSats from Skyroot and Grahaa Space and an in-orbit soft-robotic-capture experiment.
Manik Gupta
Author
Former ISRO chairman S. Somanath has joined Chennai-based launch startup Agnikul Cosmos as a board observer, weeks before Mission 02 — a flight that aims to recover an orbital-class booster and turn a spent upper stage into an on-orbit platform.
Manik Gupta
Author
ISRO has qualified three critical Gaganyaan crew-module systems — the flotation bags that self-right the capsule after splashdown, the umbilical-separation mechanism between the crew and service modules, and the apex-cover jettison that clears the parachutes. Each clears a must-work step on the road to India's first crewed flight.
Manik Gupta
Author
India's first dedicated space-tech venture fund, the ₹1,600 crore Antariksh Venture Capital Fund anchored by IN-SPACe, has made its maiden investment: ₹60 crore into Hyderabad's Dhruva Space. The deal signals that state-anchored, hardware-friendly capital is finally reaching Indian space startups.
Manik Gupta
Author
HAL won the ₹511 crore transfer of ISRO's SSLV, the first full handover of an Indian launch vehicle to one firm. The structure frees ISRO for advanced missions and makes HAL an integrated launch-services player.
Manik Gupta
Author
ISRO has confirmed the successful conduct of IMAT-05, the fifth integrated main-parachute airdrop test for Gaganyaan, held on 7 July 2026 at ADRDE's drop zone in Sheopur, Madhya Pradesh. The test qualifies the crew module's main parachute for the first uncrewed G1 mission, part of India's build-up to a crewed flight in 2027.
Manik Gupta
Author
BAAS Technologies, a 2024-founded Nashik startup, has raised ₹5 crore in a pre-seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures with SINE IIT Bombay, to build reusable launch vehicles and their propulsion in-house — and a 100 kN engine test facility in Pune.
Manik Gupta
Author
Pixxel's US NRO hyperspectral contract, GalaxEye's first-on-orbit OptoSAR fusion and NISAR's 100,000+ free L-band SAR products reframe Indian Earth observation as a defensible ISR play with sensor-fusion moats.
Manik Gupta
Author
ISRO has cleared the CE20 cryogenic engine for its next heavy-lift flight, LVM3-M7, firing it at up to 22 tonnes of thrust and debuting a Nozzle Protection System for the first time in an acceptance test.
Manik Gupta
Author
Chennai's Agnikul Cosmos has signed an MoU with Finland's ICEYE to explore an end-to-end, India-built synthetic aperture radar constellation — satellites made locally and launched on Agnikul's indigenous Agnibaan rocket.
Manik Gupta
Author
ISRO has test-fired the solid motor for SOLVE, a purpose-built sub-orbital vehicle designed to loft a Gaganyaan crew module to 10-17 km and validate the capsule's multi-stage parachute landing system.
Manik Gupta
Author
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At the CII Tamil Nadu Defence X Conclave 2026, DRDO's Dr B.K. Das said the agency is drawing up a roadmap to use ISRO's upcoming Kulasekharapatnam spaceport for rapid-response military reconnaissance satellites, exploiting the site's fuel-saving southward polar trajectories. DRDO is also finalising an industry-friendly procurement policy to draw in private firms.
Manik Gupta
Author
Skyroot Aerospace has opened a 12 July–4 August 2026 launch window for Mission Aagaman, the maiden orbital flight of Vikram-1, India's first privately built orbital-class rocket, from Sriharikota. All stages are stacked at the pad.
Manik Gupta
Author
ISRO fired the power head of its semi-cryogenic engine at 175 tonnes of thrust on 24 June 2026 — 88 percent of full rating — clearing the way for a full 200-tonne test of a cleaner, LOX-kerosene engine meant to boost the LVM3 and the Next Generation Launch Vehicle.
Manik Gupta
Author
Bengaluru deep-tech startup QOSMIC has raised $3.33 million from Accel, Prosus and others to build laser-based optical communication systems for satellites — ground stations and terminals meant to break the radio-frequency downlink bottleneck of the space economy.
Manik Gupta
Author
IN-SPACe has issued Expressions of Interest to transfer full technology for ISRO's PSLV — and, for the first time, the heavy-lift LVM3 — to majority Indian-owned private firms, with ISRO hand-holding for 30 to 42 months. The move aims to free ISRO for Gaganyaan and deep space while industry runs operational launches.
Manik Gupta
Author
On June 21 2026, ISRO opened its proprietary SAR and hyperspectral datasets to domestic AI developers via the Bharatiya Antariksh Hackathon. Here is what the cloud-removal mandate means technically, commercially, and strategically — and why it is a bigger deal than the hackathon framing suggests.
Manik Gupta
Author
Digantara's $50M Series B funds 15 tracking satellites and a pivot to space-based missile warning. The debris-tracking base business is high-margin; the defense move is the asymmetric, riskier bet.
Manik Gupta
Author
The ePlane Company is the first private Indian entity to win a DGCA Design Organisation Approval for its e200X eVTOL, a durable regulatory moat now anchoring a planned $40-50M Series C toward fleet commercialisation.
Manik Gupta
Author
IN-SPACe's SBaaS contracts give Dhruva Space, Astrome and Azista ₹5 crore each for modular small-sat buses, while Dhruva's ₹105 crore Project Garud targets a 500 kg-class platform for constellations.
Manik Gupta
Author
Agnikul Cosmos ground-tested a four-Agnilet cluster, using an electric pump-fed cycle to turn thrust-matching into software-defined throttling. With a $500M-plus valuation and ICEYE and Safran MoUs, it de-risks a targeted late-2026 orbital launch.
Manik Gupta
Author
Agnikul is reportedly raising $50-75M at ~$500M, but the standout is Tamil Nadu's TIDCO taking a ₹25 crore equity stake, a rare government bet on a private Indian launch startup's 3D-printed engine moat.
Manik Gupta
Author
Skyroot's $60M raise at a $1.1B pre-money made it India's first space-tech unicorn — co-led by Sherpalo and GIC, with BlackRock joining. The valuation is set ahead of orbital revenue; Vikram-1's maiden flight is the binding de-risking event.
Manik Gupta
Author
Skyroot became India's first space-tech unicorn on a ~$60M raise at ~$1.1B, and placed its carbon-composite Vikram-1 at Sriharikota. A June 2026 orbital attempt now de-risks the whole private-launch thesis.
Manik Gupta
Author
GalaxEye's ~190 kg Mission Drishti co-locates X-band SAR and a 7-band multispectral imager on one bench, fusing them in orbit. The SyncFusion architecture kills ground-station fusion latency and underwrites a defensible Earth-observation moat.
Manik Gupta
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