Indian Space Research Organisation

Overview

The Indian Space Research Organisation is the national space agency of India, headquartered in Bengaluru. It is the principal research and development arm of the Department of Space, which is overseen by the Prime Minister, and the chairman of ISRO is also the chief executive of the department. It is responsible for space based operations, space exploration, international cooperation and the development of related technology.^[9]

The agency maintains constellations of imaging, communication and remote sensing satellites, operates the GAGAN satellite based augmentation system and the NavIC regional navigation system, and has sent three missions to the Moon and one to Mars. It builds its own launch vehicles, the PSLV, GSLV, LVM3 and SSLV, and has full launch capability including cryogenic engines.^[9]

Its programmes are justified in the language of development rather than prestige. Vikram Sarabhai, who proposed the programme, said in 1969 that India should be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society, and should not confuse that with schemes whose primary impact is for show. The agency's own account of its purpose still leads with applications: communications, weather, disaster management, telemedicine, navigation and resource mapping.^[9]

Milestones

1. 1962The Indian National Committee for Space Research is set up on the recommendation of Vikram Sarabhai.
2. 1963The first sounding rocket is launched from Thumba, near Thiruvananthapuram.
3. 1969The organisation is renamed ISRO on 15 August and placed under the Department of Atomic Energy.
4. 1972A Space Commission and the Department of Space are created, bringing ISRO under their purview.
5. 1975Aryabhata, India's first satellite, is launched with Soviet help.
6. 1980SLV-3 places the Rohini satellite in orbit, making India the seventh country to launch a satellite itself.
7. 2008Chandrayaan-1 orbits the Moon and returns evidence of water molecules on the surface.
8. 2014The Mars Orbiter Mission enters Mars orbit on the agency's first attempt.
9. 2017A single PSLV flight places 104 satellites in orbit.
10. 2023Chandrayaan-3 lands near the lunar south pole, and Aditya-L1 is launched to the Sun and Earth Lagrange point.
11. 2026The second launch complex at Kulasekarapattinam is slated for commissioning, for the SSLV and private launchers.^[9]

Origins

The programme began as a committee rather than an agency. INCOSPAR was created in 1962 on Sarabhai's recommendation, and its first rocket flew from Thumba in 1963. The organisation was renamed ISRO in 1969 and subsumed into the Department of Atomic Energy; in 1972 the government created a Space Commission and the Department of Space, which have governed it since.^[9]

Early capacity had to be borrowed or bought: Aryabhata went up on a Soviet rocket in 1975, and Indian remote sensing and communications satellites were launched from abroad for years. The point at which the country could place its own satellite in orbit came in 1980 with the SLV-3 flight that carried Rohini, making India the seventh nation with orbital launch capability.^[9]

Launch vehicles

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle became the workhorse of the programme, and in February 2017 a single flight placed 104 satellites in orbit, most of them small foreign craft, which demonstrated the release mechanism as much as the rocket. The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle carries heavier communications satellites, and its Mark III variant, now called LVM3, is the vehicle chosen for the crewed Gaganyaan programme. The Small Satellite Launch Vehicle was added for compact payloads.^[9]

Heavy payloads still leave on foreign rockets, which is why the agency has worked towards a heavier indigenous launcher, a modular Next Generation Launch Vehicle, and a semi-cryogenic engine: in March 2025 it reported progress on the SE-2000, a 2,000 kilonewton engine meant to power a semi-cryogenic booster stage. Reusable methane and liquid oxygen engines are in development, and plans for a heavy and a super heavy lift vehicle have been described in official presentations.^[9]

Infrastructure has grown with the vehicles. A second Vehicle Assembly Building was realised at Sriharikota for the heavier GSLV class, a third launch pad was approved in January 2025 with a budget of about ₹3,985 crore for completion in 2029 to serve the NGLV and LVM3, and a new spaceport at Kulasekarapattinam in Tamil Nadu is being built for the SSLV and for private launch vehicles, with space for twenty to twenty five launches a year.^[1][9]

Commercial sales run through NewSpace India Limited, which offers launch and satellite services, and the regulator IN-SPACe oversees private participation in the sector.^[9]

Satellites and applications

• Indian Remote Sensing satellites supply imagery for agriculture, forestry, water resources, urban planning and disaster response.
• INSAT communications and broadcast satellites carry television, telephony and weather payloads.
• NavIC, the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System, provides positioning over India and a surrounding region.
• GAGAN augments GPS signals for aviation over Indian airspace.
• GSAT-7A, launched in December 2018, is a communications satellite used by the Indian Air Force to link ground stations, aircraft and radar networks, described at the time as a dedicated military communications asset.^[8]

Deep space and human spaceflight

Chandrayaan-1 orbited the Moon in 2008 and carried instruments that confirmed water molecules on the lunar surface. Chandrayaan-2 followed in 2019, and Chandrayaan-3 in 2023 landed near the lunar south pole, making India the first country to land in that region.^[9]

The Mars Orbiter Mission, launched in 2013 and arriving in 2014, reached Mars orbit on the agency's first attempt and at a fraction of the cost of comparable missions. Aditya-L1, launched in 2023, is a solar observatory stationed at the Sun and Earth Lagrange point L1, and the XPoSat mission studies X-ray polarisation.^[9]

Gaganyaan is the crewed orbital programme. The first proposal to send Indians to space was discussed in 2006, and trials began in 2007 with the Space Capsule Recovery Experiment, which returned to Earth after twelve days. A pad abort test of the crew escape system ran successfully in 2018, a Human Space Flight Centre was announced in 2019, and astronaut candidates began training in Russia. The plan is to carry two or three crew to an altitude of 300 to 400 kilometres for at least seven days on an LVM3.^{[2][3][4][5][6][9]}

The agency has also stated ambitions for an Indian space station and for a Venus orbiter, both of which remain programme proposals rather than committed missions.^[7]

Governance and people

ISRO sits inside the Department of Space, which also oversees the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, the National Remote Sensing Centre and the Physical Research Laboratory. Around seventeen thousand people work for the agency, spread across research centres such as the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre at Thiruvananthapuram for launch vehicles, the U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru for spacecraft, the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre, and the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, which operates the launch pads.^[9]

The agency has won the Indira Gandhi Prize and the Gandhi Peace Prize, and its former chairman A. P. J. Abdul Kalam went on to become President of India, which is the clearest illustration of how tightly the space programme has been bound to the country's scientific establishment.^[9]

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