ISRO’s big commercial coup – beats SpaceX to bag global satellite launches

This gears up ISRO to tap huge opportunities in launching low-earth orbiting satellites.

The ‘Baahubali’ rocket – LVM3, which is the heaviest launcher in India’s stable, is set for its first commercial launch next week. Against massive competition from global giants and even upstart private space companies like SpaceX, ISRO bagged a contract to launch 72 satellites for the UK-based OneWeb constellation. This launch is expected to happen very early on October 23rd morning from Sriharikota.

“ISRO can be a prime launcher (in the global market) for thousands of low earth orbit satellites which are due to launch soon,” says S Somanath, a rocket engineer and Chairman, ISRO.

The global launch services market is dominated by a handful of companies and is highly competitive. `The geo-political situation favoured India and ISRO was very quick to respond and grabbed the opportunity by offering the Launch Vehicle Mark 3 to the OneWeb consortium’. This is part of the new thrust given by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make the Indian space ecosystem more inclusive to the Indian private space industry.

Potential money spinner

The 640-ton rocket LVM3, earlier called the Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV Mark III), has had three consecutively successful launches and the last launch took place on July 22, 2019 when the 43-meter rocket lifted India’s Chandrayaan-2 satellite into its precise orbit. Earlier in 2017 and 2018 it placed two communications satellites in orbit.

Each of these rockets costs upwards of Rs 350 crore and Somanath calls it ‘a simple, elegant but complex machine’. If all goes well with the launch, LVM3 could become a money spinner for India.

OneWeb is a constellation of 648 small satellites that will orbit the Earth and provide satellite-based Internet. In 2020, Bharti Global, a partner company of Bharti enterprises headed by Sunil Bharti Mittal along with the British government bought OneWeb when the company was heading for bankruptcy. Together they invested $1 billion to make it viable again. This was India’s biggest foray into the commercial aerospace market.

Till date OneWeb has launched 428 satellites and all of these were on the Russian Soyuz launchers but the war in Ukraine changed the whole global situation and offered a window of opportunity to New Space India Limited (NSIL) a public sector undertaking of ISRO to competitively offer its services from Sriharikota.

Geopolitical uncertainties

Earlier in the year, Space News reported that `with geopolitical tensions rising amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin said the planned March 4, 2022 launch could only go ahead if OneWeb guaranteed the satellites would not be used for military purposes, and the British government divested its stake in the company. “There’s no negotiation on OneWeb: the UK Government is not selling its share,” UK’s former business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said in response. Subsequently, OneWeb had to extract its entire staff from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

It is this impasse that opened an opportunity for India and by April 21, 2022 OneWeb and ISRO inked a deal to have two dedicated launches of the LVM3 to launch 72 satellites from India. Sunil Bharti Mittal, OneWeb Executive Chairman, called it a `historic day’. According to him it would add `considerable momentum’ to the development of OneWeb’s network. In less than 6 months by September 20, 2022 the first set of 36 satellites, each weighing about 150 kilograms, reached India’s space port.

This would be the first launch of LVM3 to try and place multiple satellites in the low earth orbit. Somanath says `it is a versatile frugal rocket that can be configured to undertake a variety of missions’. Incidentally, in 2017 India’s workhorse rocket – the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) – successfully lifted a record 104 satellites into space in one go on February 15 2017.

At Sriharikota there is hectic activity underway to meet the deadline before the cyclone season poses challenges. Neil Masterson, OneWeb CEO, said: “OneWeb’s dedication to industry collaboration has allowed us to successfully navigate the ever changing global environment and prepare for yet another milestone launch. . Many thanks to our top-of-the line partners ISRO and NSIL, as well as our shareholder Bharti Global for their continued stewardship, we were able to facilitate this upcoming pioneering launch in Sriharikota, India.”

A giant step

A successful OneWeb launch will be a giant step for ISRO in the commercial satellite launch market. A new report released this week titled “Developing the Space Ecosystem in India” prepared by EY (formerly Ernst & Young) asserts that the `Indian space economy is set for a growth to become worth US$13 billion by 2025″. This highlights the point that `India has a well-developed space program, boosted by the realization of indigenous technology, facilities, systems, and rollout of services in a systematic manner. India accounted for approximately 2.6% of the global space economy in 2020 amounting to US$9.6 billion in 2020, which was 0.5% of the GDP of the country.’ No mean achievement!

In addition to the two launches by ISRO, OneWeb has also contracted three launches on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to hoist another 144 satellites. If all goes well ISRO may also get an opportunity in the OneWeb next generation launches.

In a statement OneWeb says “Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a visionary leader who understands technology exceptionally well. In alignment with his vision, OneWeb is committed to providing connectivity across India, making high-speed, low-latency network services possible in parts of the country where this has previously been inaccessible. Standing true to OneWeb’s mission, this launch will create universal connectivity and establish India as a strong provider of the commercial heavy launch vehicle. This is the just the beginning of what we believe will be a long partnership with NSIL and ISRO.”

This shows that India effectively outmaneuvered Elon Musk’s romantic spirit to become the preferred rocket launch destination for the world in this instance. The opening of the global space sector to India’s industry is a good omen as ISRO charts its course in a new commercial orbit.