Since the 1970s the barrier island of Sriharikota on India’s east coast has served as the country’s Cape Canaveral, with the national space agency launching scores of spacecraft headed as far as the moon and Mars. But in November a new tenant appeared: Agnikul Cosmos, a startup based in Chennai, 60 miles to the south, which plans to use its own launchpad on the island for its first mission, scheduled for May or June. The company aims to complete at least four launches in 2024, taking advantage of the country’s new embrace of space startups. “This opens up India as a gateway for private players to go into space,” says Srinath Ravichandran, Agnikul’s co-founder.
Agnikul has no intention of taking on heavyweights such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is working on spacecraft that can carry as much cargo as a half-dozen eighteen-wheelers can. Instead the company says its Agnibaan rocket can serve customers seeking to launch payloads of 100 kilograms (220 pounds). And with the number of satellites in orbit projected to grow tenfold, to more than 60,000, by 2030, Ravichandran says private companies such as his can prosper by catering to price-conscious customers. “There is enough stuff for everyone to do,” he says.
Promoting India’s space sector is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s strategy of offering an alternative to China for goods ranging from auto parts to iPhones. As in many other industries, India’s space startups got a late start compared with their Chinese peers, which have been allowed in the field for almost a decade and have completed several orbital launches. India didn’t start liberalizing the sector until 2020.
