Space Debris: The Scattered Danger in Orbit Let’s begin with a small everyday picture. Imagine you are driving on a highway at 100 km/h, and suddenly a tiny pebble flies up and hits your windscreen. Even at that modest speed, a small stone can crack the glass. Now take that same scene and move it…
Space Traffic Management (STM) Think of outer space as a busy international airspace — except there is no Air Traffic Control, no unified radar network, no binding rules for who gives way to whom, and no international police. Over 9,000 active satellites and millions of debris fragments share the same sky. Without STM, catastrophic collisions…
Militarisation of Space There is an important conceptual distinction you must remember: Militarisation vs. Weaponisation. Militarisation is using space to SUPPORT military operations — like using GPS for troop coordination. Weaponisation is placing or using WEAPONS in space itself. The Outer Space Treaty (1967) does not ban militarisation. It only bans WMDs in orbit. This…
Commercialisation of India’s Space Sector For most of its history, India’s space programme was entirely government-driven. ISRO did everything — research, development, manufacturing, launches, and commercial operations. This model worked for the early phases, but it created bottlenecks: ISRO’s budget is limited, the global space market is growing explosively (projected to reach $1 trillion by…
Major Global Space Agencies — The World’s ‘Space Clubs’ Before anything else, understand this: space exploration has never been a solo act. It is an international club, where every member nation has its own agency, its own budget, and its own agenda. Let us meet these ‘clubs’ one by one. NASA (USA) Roscosmos (Russia) ESA…
If satellites are the ‘what’ of India’s space programme, then launch vehicles are the ‘how’. No matter how brilliant a satellite design is, it is useless unless you can get it into orbit. This is the fundamental challenge that ISRO‘s rocket scientists solve every time. India’s launch vehicles have evolved from a humble 40 kg…
Major Lunar Missions — The Story of the Moon The Moon has always been humanity’s first space destination — simply because it is the nearest. But getting there was never a straight line; it was a clear evolution: first we went just to take photographs, then we attempted soft landings, then we sent humans, and…
Human Spaceflight — India Goes to Space Every nation that has sent humans to space has been forever changed by the experience. The USA did it in 1961 (Alan Shepard), the Soviet Union in 1961 (Yuri Gagarin), China in 2003 (Yang Liwei). India is next. The Gaganyaan programme is not just a prestige project —…
ISRO’s Interplanetary and Deep-Space Missions Launching satellites in Earth orbit is one thing. But leaving Earth’s gravity entirely, travelling hundreds of millions of kilometres, and precisely entering another planet’s orbit — that is an entirely different level of engineering. India has accomplished this, and the story of how ISRO achieved these feats with frugal budgets…
Major Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Let us talk about a technology that works for you every single day — right inside your mobile phone: GNSS. GNSS is a constellation of satellites that provides positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services globally. It tells you your location (latitude, longitude, altitude), speed, and precise time — anywhere…
