Half a dozen graduates from IIT, BITS Pilani, and other engineering colleges are propelling India into the next frontier of modern spaceflight — satellites in LEO. Hyderabad is a hub.
French space firm, Prométhée Earth Intelligence, has already announced its interest in working with Skyroot for the Vikram project. Vikram-1 is scheduled to be launched this year.
Private sector would be interested in Low Earth Orbit satellites that have greater commercial utility value. But they will need to deal with UN office for outer space whose members are only govts.
Jeff Bezos will travel to the edge of space in his New Shepard aircraft — more than a week after billionaire Richard Branson defeated him in a fast developing space race.
Right now, private players can only boast of delivering low-cost products and services to ISRO, but it needs to widen its customer base and develop more design capabilities.
This is the game every nation is now learning to play. Some are finding new allies or seeing value among nations where they’d seen marginal interest. The starkest example is India & Europe.
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