PM to launch Defence Space Mission – with 75 initiatives
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch Defence Space Mission, the next generation of national offence and defence, as he inaugurates the Defexpo ’22 at Gandhinagar in Gujarat on Wednesday, according to people familiar with the matter.
As India celebrates Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav to mark its 75th year of Independence, 75 challenges, providing a holistic overview of stages of space mission, have been curated to boost the country’s space related defence preparedness within the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. The challenges will come alive on the defence ministry website the moment PM Modi presses the button in Gandhinagar, the people added.
The government has classified the challenges into five technology buckets : launch systems, satellite systems, communication and payload systems, ground systems, and software systems.
With the domain of warfare expanding beyond land, air and
sea, and into space, the Defence Space Mission is being set up with multiple dual-use technologies to provide a fillip to the nascent space industry in India. The aim is to make India a front leader in the second space age, characterised by rapid privatisation.
India’s development is highly dependent on space-based technologies such as NAVIC, remote sensing, and space-based internet. The Space Defence Mission will provide a boost to spacebased tech with multiple civilian and military applications.
The 75 challenges have been categorised into various initiatives of the department of defence production with some 35 challenges open to around 50 identified start-ups, 20 under
Make 1 (or largely government funded) projects, and the remaining 20 being partially government funded.
While the Defence Research and Development Organisation has agreed in principle to handhold private companies by providing technical consultancy and access to facilities, the Indian Space Research Organisation has agreed to support the mission through tech support, and procuring and inducting dual-use technologies.
HT learns that the ownership, minimum order quantity, and projected development budget of each challenge has been ascertained from the end users, such as the Indian Army, Indian Air Force and Indian Navy, and that based on the inputs, the list of challenges to be launched has been finalised.
There have been multiple rounds of meetings of all stakeholders conducted with the defence secretary and additional secretary of defence production. Defence minister Rajnath Singh has also reviewed the progress of the mission, the people cited in the first instance said.