Initially, OneWeb was supposed to launch its satellites through the Russian space agency. He canceled the plan after the agency halted the launch amid the Russia-Ukraine war, seeking a guarantee from the UK government-backed company that the satellites would not be used against it and that the British government would sell it. your participation.
Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chief Executive of OneWeb, said: “India stepped up when we needed them most. We had a big setback with the Russia-Ukraine war: six launches were withdrawn, they were contracted and paid for in full. Now, OneWeb is not only struggling to get the money back, but it has also lost 36 satellites, three very valuable ones, and more importantly, it lost almost a year.” He said that once Soyuz came out, there were few options left, with the remaining satellites in the constellation of more than 600 satellites launched by SpaceX and the Indian Space Research Organization.
SpaceX, despite developing a similar satellite network called Starlink, launched some of the OneWeb satellites. And, India, through two LVM3 launches, put 72 OneWeb satellites into orbit. ArianeSpace was not viable as it had retired its workhorse, the Ariane5 rocket, and there were significant delays with Ariane6.
The launches not only consolidated the LVM3 as a propelling commercial vehicle ISRO‘s entry into the heavier commercial launch market, also earned the agency more than Rs 1,000 crore.
The launch service provided to OneWeb, for which the space agency had to move some of its missions, ended up generating some of the highest revenue. And, over the years, there has been an increase in the funds that the space agency has generated.
After opening the space sector to private players in 2020, India has been focused on increasing its share of the global commercial space market. Despite being one of the top countries in the space, India accounts for only 2% of the commercial market today. The government plans to increase this to 10% by 2030 through commercial launches by ISRO and launches offered by private companies such as Skyroot and Agnikul which are in the process of developing their own launch vehicles.
With the commercial sector in mind, ISRO has also developed the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle which is intended to commercially provide on-demand launch services. It has a low turnaround time of days and costs much less than the current PSLV workhorse. Two development flights of the SSLV have been completed, one successful, one partially successful, and it has been included in the ISRO fleet.
To date, Isro has launched 384 foreign satellites from at least 36 countries, with at least 10 dedicated commercial missions and several other Indian missions where they were carried as passenger satellites. The largest number of these commercial launches have been from companies in the United States.
A report by the parliamentary standing committee on the budget of the space agency said that there was an increase in revenue generated by the trading arm New Space India Limited created in 2019. According to the report, the revenue generated by NSIL increased from R1 731 crores in 2021. -22 to a projected R3,509 crores in 2023-24. This was an increase of 100% and the report added: “The Committee appreciates the achievements of NSIL in such a short time and recommends that the Department give full support to NSIL so that it can act as an agency of international character and quality. ”, the report said.
But it is not only the commercial arm, the turnover generated by the department has also increased. The committee noted that the revenue generated by the Space Department increased from Rs 929 crore in 2020-21 to Rs 2780 in 2022-23. This is an increase of almost 200% and since the budget allocation for 2023-24 is the smallest in the last three years, the committee noted: “This also suggests the fact that the Department is in transition from an institution based on research to a more commercially oriented agency with buoyant internal revenues.”
