India's space PSU NSIL to vie with SpaceX By CIOReviewIndia Team

India's space PSU NSIL to vie with SpaceX

CIOReviewIndia Team | Monday, 01 March 2021, 06:22 IST

Perhaps SpaceX is the king of the space missions and rocket launches market. And there is a lot of innovation going around in the company, so much so that the company has independently outperformed the space operations of all countries. But now India’s Space PSU NSIL is going to compete with the firm. NSIL stands for New Space India Limited, and it is making strategies to acquire a piece of the launch market that SpaceX has been profiting from. Consequently, PSU NSIL is also going to provide prices that are better or at least comparable to SpaceX.

India’s space PSU NSIL missions

India has already considered a space launch on 28th February with a foreign satellite and many more dedicated ones in the coming epoch. According to the reports, the company already has closed a deal to launch satellites for a Southeast Asian company. Due to privacy, the name of the company is unknown. But we did know that the satellite will be Earth-imaging ones. Two of them will be launches in the first half of 2022 and one in 2023.

The reason behind stepping into the launches sector is the growing market for it. And it is not a linear growth but exponential. K Sivan, Secretary of the Department of Space, said that there is a huge demand for small satellite launches. India has already launched 328 foreign satellites and has earned millions of dollars in revenue from the US and European markets.

Challenging with SpaceX

SpaceX has been offering very competitive rates to small companies for their satellite launches. Moreover in order to compete with SpaceX, India’s Space PSU NSIL needs to concentrate on keeping their price low and providing better service and more flexibility. On average, SpaceX provides rates nearly to $6000-$7000 per kg of any satellite launch; while previously, the costs for the same launch through ISRO would have been much higher.

It is said, NSIL already has many companies in queue for their launch services. The mega-constellations that OneWeb is about to build are also going to be done by NSIL. To increase their frequency of launches and compete with SpaceX, the company has also been planning to build a secondary launch site, the DoS. It has also been developing the SSLV or the small satellite launch vehicle, which will significantly increase the pace of their launches. The use of the SSLV might also greatly bring down the launch price of satellites.

India’s Space PSU NSIL is going to be advancement for India in the space sector. And the use of SSLV and a second launch site will also help boost the rocket launches and help it compete with SpaceX.