¶India’s next 15 years. ISRO and India’s Prime Minister recently shared updated objectives for the country’s space program over the next decade and a half, with the ultimate goal of a crewed domestic Moon landing by 2040. A key change is the way ISRO will send astronauts to the Moon—rumored, but now confirmed, LMLV will be India’s new heavy-lift Moon rocket, ostensibly replacing, but likely an evolution of, the out-of-favor and somewhat underpowered NGLV. LMLV is slated to be ready by 2035. In the meantime, the country will expand its regional GNSS coverage (IRNSS) to a global system (completing its rebrand as NavIC) over the next several years, joining the slowly growing list of global navigation constellations: GPS (US), GLONASS (Russia), Galileo (EU), and BeiDou (China). The successful Chandrayaan program will continue with Chandrayaan-4 returning lunar samples and the long-announced but only recently inked Chandrayaan-5, which is the ISRO/JAXA 350 kg LUPEX rover delivery mission to the South Pole. Ch-6 and beyond are still undefined, but may build toward ISRU and a lunar navigation system. ISRO also plans to expand its satellite fleet to (an oddly specific) 103 satellites by 2040 and build a 140-satellite internet constellation through public-private partnership, possibly facilitated by the “soon-to-be finished” commercial enablement Space Bill (which was originally drafted in 2017… so we’re not holding our breath). Altogether, this plan aims for India and ISRO to grow to capture ~10% of the global space market over this time, up from their current 1.7% share. |