ISRO denies privatization reports, stating its role remains central to space research. Reforms aim to expand India's space ecosystem and foster global competitiveness. Private companies will scale mature technologies, complementing ISRO's advanced research efforts. ISRO will focus on frontier technologies and complex national missions. This transition creates an ISRO-led national space ecosystem for growth.
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The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has clarified that there is no move to privatise the space agency or diminish its role amid ongoing space-sector reforms, calling such reports and speculation "baseless and incorrect".
ISRO will continue to remain India's principal institution for advanced space research and technology development, national and strategic missions, space science and exploration, and critical and frontier space capabilities, it said.
The space agency said greater participation by private companies is aimed at expanding India's space ecosystem and allowing ISRO to focus more strongly on next-generation technologies and complex national missions.
"What is changing is not the importance of ISRO, but the scale and structure of India's space ecosystem," ISRO said in its clarification.
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IN-SPACe chairman backs ISRO's central role
Pawan K Goenka, chairman of IN-SPACe, also rejected concerns that ISRO's role was being diminished, saying the space agency would remain the "bedrock" of India's space sector.
"There has been some misleading narrative in the media around the future role of ISRO. Let me say it unequivocally: ISRO's role is by no means diminishing. It will remain the bedrock of Indian space sector," Goenka said in a post on X.
He said the reforms undertaken since 2020 were aimed at expanding India's overall space ecosystem, with IN-SPACe facilitating and authorising greater non-government participation and NewSpace India Ltd (NSIL) helping commercialise mature capabilities.
He said the aim was to enable industry to increasingly manufacture and scale mature launch vehicles, satellites and other systems, while ISRO focuses on advanced R&D, scientific and strategic missions, new technologies and infrastructure that is too complex for the private sector to develop independently.
He said ISRO would remain at the core of India's space programme and lead frontier research and next-generation national missions, including the Bharatiya Antariksh Station by 2035, an Indian crewed mission to the Moon by 2040, next-generation launch systems and sustained lunar and planetary exploration.
"The direction is not a smaller ISRO. It is a larger Indian space ecosystem, with ISRO pushing the technological frontier," Goenka said.
ISRO to focus on frontier technologies
ISRO said the space-sector reforms initiated since 2020 and institutionalised through the Indian Space Policy 2023, along with the progressive liberalisation of foreign direct investment (FDI) policy, are aimed at creating a larger, stronger and globally competitive Indian space ecosystem.
Industry, startups and academia are being enabled to participate across the space value chain, complementing ISRO's capabilities. The agency said the reforms should be viewed as ecosystem expansion and capability multiplication, not privatisation.
ISRO said its role would progressively strengthen in areas including frontier research and development, advanced technologies, human spaceflight, next-generation launch systems, deep-space and planetary missions and strategic national capabilities.
It will continue developing advanced payloads for communication, navigation and Earth observation, sensors, propulsion systems and other critical technologies.
Private sector to scale mature technologies
At the same time, mature technologies and routinely manufactured systems can increasingly be scaled through industry and public sector undertakings (PSUs), ISRO said.
The agency has already transferred multiple technologies to industry. Such technology transfers do not mean ISRO is withdrawing from those domains, it said, adding that they enable large-scale production, commercialisation, innovation and access to global markets.
Production of mature launch vehicles, routine satellites and other established systems can increasingly be undertaken by industry or PSUs through appropriate competitive processes.
This would allow ISRO to devote more scientific manpower and resources to advanced research and next-generation missions, while the wider ecosystem provides the investment, manufacturing capacity and scale required for an expanding space programme.
ISRO described the transition as an "ISRO-led national space ecosystem", with the agency retaining its core scientific and strategic mandate while industry takes on a larger role in scaling mature technologies and capabilities.
