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Encouraged by high-profile successes elsewhere, India wants its private space companies to increase their share of the global launch market by fivefold within the next decade — an effort boosted by the personal support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In the year after the country opened the way for private launches in 2020, the number of space startups more than doubled, from 21 to 47.

At the end of 2022, Skyroot Aerospace, whose investors include Sherpalo Ventures and Singapore’s GIC, launched India’s first privately built rocket into space.

“Many times initiatives get announced and they die. This is not one of those,” said Pawan Goenka, an auto-industry veteran who last year was named head of Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe), a newly created space regulatory body. “Space is one of the most favourite areas of our prime minister right now, one that he wants to see move.”

Investors poured $119 million (nearly Rs. 980 crore) into Indian space startups in 2022, up from a total of just $38 million (nearly Rs. 312 crore) in all the years up to 2017. They see a less-costly alternative to European launchers that are grounded or under development, as well as access to a bustling manufacturing hub, analysts say.

That has meant a boom for young space companies such as Skyroot and Agnikul Cosmos — which promise to slash launch costs for satellites — Satsure, offering satellite-data and analytics services, and Pixxel, which in March won a five-year contract from the US National Reconnaissance Office.

“It was a big surprise for all of us that the launch and the policy change all happened on time and we were able to meet our deadlines with complete support. We did not have a single day’s delay because of policy issues,” said Pawan Chandana, co-founder of Skyroot, which is valued at $163 million. (nearly Rs. 1,338 crore).

Other startup founders say the new approach means approvals come easier, stakeholders are aligned with each other, and there are more private industry veterans in government helping the sector.

There are challenges, however. The country accounts for just 2 percent of the space sector’s global revenue, estimated at $370 billion (nearly Rs. 30,38,720 crore) in 2020. Funding has only trickled in, as customers want to see successful launches before committing costly payloads to unproven designs.

“There are some very good companies, but at the moment, we are very behind the US or China,” said Prateep Basu, co-founder of SatSure. “Policy unlocking is very important, but the world will not take real notice until you do something remarkable like what SpaceX did.”

In the United States, the government-operated NASA handles space exploration while private companies do launches and build crewed vehicles. Proponents say that has lowered costs, but it also led to a multiyear gap in which Washington relied on Russian space vehicles to travel to the International Space Station.

SpaceX, which serves private customers and governments, conducted more than 60 launches in 2022 alone.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) manages all of the country’s launch infrastructure, although Agnikul is planning its own launchpad.

“We realised the industry’s basic need is money,” said Jayant Patil, head of the launch vehicles committee at the Indian Space Association (ISPA), a quasi-government body that helps address private sector concerns.

Patil said the government is offering millions of dollars’ worth of seed funding to startups that use satellite data to boost India’s crop yields. Startups with potential military applications are vetted for government investment separately.

Kanchan Gupta, the Modi government’s senior adviser at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, said that the country could not afford to lag behind in the space race, and that “everything cannot be done by the government alone”.

“The whole idea is to provide policy stability, predictability,” Gupta said. “Letting the private sector know where the government comes in, where the government doesn’t come in, where they can get in, where they cannot get in.”

‘Self-sustaining’

The privatisation effort began with a late 2020 video conference call between PM Modi and executives, five people involved in the process say. Since then, PM Modi has made it clear he wants to sweep away red tape and create national champions, they say.

“The prime minister’s aim is to do with space what we have done with IT,” said one of the people, who declined to be named because the call and ensuing meetings were private.

ISRO will focus on exploration but still support private launch efforts, giving the country’s space startups global legitimacy, industry executives said.

The agency will work alongside an advisory panel – with members from In-SPACe, ISPA and NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), the government’s commercial launch arm — that helped the government announce a new, business-friendly regulatory framework in April.

Hindustan Aeronautics and Larsen & Toubro, which helped shape the privatisation policies, have a $100 million (nearly Rs. 821 crore) contract to deliver ISRO’s next launch vehicle in 2024.

“PM Modi is a technology person. So the suggestion is to hand over production and development to private players, while we look at technology. It then becomes a self-sustaining environment,” said S. Somanath, chairman of ISRO.

The country’s space companies also hope to find new customers as sanctions and political tensions have cut off Russia from much of the international launch market after the invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “special operation”.

The British satellite company OneWeb, for example, partnered with ISRO for a launch after Russia cancelled its launches.

“If you look at high technology, it is a matter of geopolitics… India definitely has some leverage right now,”said Laxman Behera, chairperson at the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Special Centre for National Security Studies.

© Thomson Reuters 2023


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Earth’s Oldest Impact Crater Turns Out to Be Much Younger Claims New Study

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Earth’s Oldest Impact Crater Turns Out to Be Much Younger Claims New Study

A location in Western Australia that used to be named as the oldest meteorite impact crater on Earth is now actually a lot younger than that, scientists announced today in Science Advances. The structure — previously dated to 3.5 billion years ago and located within Western Australia’s North Pole Dome region of the Pilbara — was believed to be older than any of Earth’s known impact craters. Today, new research published in the journal Geochemistry found that what we now call the Miralga impact structure is, in fact, much younger, at 2.7 billion years old, and considerably smaller in diameter. This recasts earlier ideas on the early Earth’s geological activity and questions previous theories regarding impact-driven crust formation or perhaps even early life.

Miralga Crater Loses Oldest Impact Title but Gains New Scientific Relevance

As per The Conversation article republished by Space.com, the teams that explored the crater could only point to one thing that was likely — it had been formed by an impact. However, they ultimately disagreed as to whether this event had been and how large it was. Younger rocks contain shatter cones, indicating Earth’s early continental geology shielded the impact to a specific 2.7 billion-400 million-year period despite earlier assertions.

They made the determination to honour the cultural revision of one site from 100 km across to a more manageable 16 km wide crater named Miralga. It’s the site – still affected by seawater – of events too recent to influence the Earth’s crust.

The Miralga basalt feature (unique to basalt) is a rare site for an instrument to practice on before heading to Mars, while advancing our understanding of impacts and early life prospects.

Isotopic dating to clarify the crucial part played by this, the oldest crater on Earth and unique in a geological sense, in planetary science and early Earth history is presently ongoing at Miralga.

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NASA’s TRACERS Satellites Begin Solar Wind Study Despite SV1 Glitch

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NASA's TRACERS Satellites Begin Solar Wind Study Despite SV1 Glitch

NASA’s TRACERS mission twin satellites were launched on July 23, 2025, to study how solar activity causes magnetic reconnection in Earth’s atmosphere. After launch, a power subsystem anomaly had affected one of the satellites (Space Vehicle 1, SV1) on July 25, causing periodic communication loss. NASA said satellite 2 (Space Vehicle 2, SV2) is “healthy,” and transition is beginning to the instrument commissioning phase. The idea behind TRACERS was to develop a complete toolkit that would allow us, for the first time, to observe all of these complex solar wind connection processes at once. NASA engineers are actively working to recover SV1. Single vector views (SV2) spacecraft are completing a healthy checkout and readying themselves for their science mission.

Recovery Efforts for SV1 Satellite

According to NASA, controllers detected a problem with SV1’s power subsystem in late July that led to intermittent contacts and a loss of communication. Data suggest SV1 can only remain active when its solar panels receive sufficient sunlight. Because of the spacecraft’s current orientation, engineers plan to wait until later in August — when SV1’s panels will receive more sun — to reestablish contact and continue recovery steps.

Meanwhile, mission teams are reviewing onboard data to diagnose the issue and plan next steps. Any time contact is regained, the team will assess SV1’s status and check for impacts on the mission’s science goals. For now, no significant updates on SV1 are expected for several weeks.

SV2 Operational Status

The mission’s other satellite, SV2, is in good health and fully operational. Mission teams have been testing SV2’s onboard instruments and systems through a standard commissioning process. This checkout is proceeding as expected, with NASA anticipating that commissioning will finish by the end of August.

Once SV2 is fully checked out, it will begin coordinated science operations with its twin to study magnetic reconnection – the process that shapes how solar activity affects Earth’s magnetic environment. For now, SV2 continues its planned tests and will soon be ready to collect valuable science data as part of the TRACERS mission.

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Scientists Explore Role of Space Radiation in Powering Alien Microbial Life

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Scientists Explore Role of Space Radiation in Powering Alien Microbial Life

The search for alien life traditionally focuses on planets in the “Goldilocks zone” — the orbital band where surface water can exist. But new research suggests life might thrive far from starlight in a so-called “radiolytic habitable zone,” where penetrating cosmic rays break buried water molecules (a process called radiolysis) into hydrogen, oxygen and energy-rich electrons. Simulations of icy worlds like Mars, Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus show cosmic rays can reach subsurface water. Researchers suggest these electrons could fuel microbes in hidden reservoirs, effectively creating underground oases of life.

Radiation as a Power Source

According to the new study, cosmic rays are fast-moving particles (electrons, protons or nuclei) blasted out by supernovas and distant stars. On Earth, most are stopped by our magnetic field and thick atmosphere. But Mars and the icy moons (which lack such shields) get hit directly; their thin air or vacuum allows rays to penetrate deep into ice and rock. When these particles strike water or ice, they trigger radiolysis – shattering molecules and freeing hydrogen, oxygen and electrons. Some Earth microbes already exploit this: for example, a bacterium 2.8 km underground in a gold mine lives entirely on hydrogen produced by radioactive decay.

Expanding the Search for Life

Dubbed the “Radiolytic Habitable Zone,” this hidden-energy band lies beneath ice or rock where cosmic rays can sustain life. Simulations show Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus has the highest radiolytic potential, followed by Mars and then Jupiter’s moon Europa. NASA’s upcoming Europa Clipper mission and telescopes like ALMA will probe these frozen worlds for chemical signs of life. Even more intriguingly, cosmic-ray impacts can directly create complex organic molecules (for example, amino-acid precursors) in ice. Because cosmic rays pervade the galaxy, even a rogue planet adrift in space would be bathed in intense radiation.

As Dimitra Atri, an astrophysicist and co-author of the new study puts it, “life might be able to survive in more places than we ever imagined”, suggesting hidden biospheres could exist in many cold, dark niches.

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