‘ISRO’s role won’t diminish’: Indian space agency rejects privatisation concerns

India’s space agency has moved to calm employees’ fears over privatisation, insisting that its role will not shrink as private companies take on more manufacturing and operational work.

The reassurance came two days after nine associations representing thousands of Indian Space Research Organisation employees wrote to the Department of Space secretary and ISRO chairman V. Narayanan. They sought clarity after IN-SPACe chairman Pawan Goenka said that private companies or public-sector undertakings would eventually make launch vehicles.

The associations asked whether Goenka’s remarks represented government policy. They also questioned how manufacturing and operational functions might be transferred, what role ISRO would retain, and what the changes would mean for current and future employees.

Goenka said media coverage had created “some misleading narrative” about ISRO’s future. “Let me say it unequivocally: ISRO’s role is by no means diminishing. It will remain the bedrock of Indian space sector. The reforms since 2020 are about expanding India’s overall space ecosystem,” he said in a post on X.

ISRO separately said it would not be privatised and that its importance would not diminish. Private-sector participation, it said, would allow the agency to concentrate on the next generation of India’s space programme while industry scales up mature technologies.

The agency said its role would strengthen in frontier research and development, advanced technologies, human spaceflight, next-generation launch systems, deep-space and planetary missions, and strategic national capabilities. Industry or public-sector companies could increasingly undertake the competitive production of mature launch vehicles, routine satellites and other established systems.

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Let me say it unequivocally: ISRO’s role is by no means diminishing. It will remain the bedrock of Indian space sector. The reforms since 2020 are about expanding India’s overall space ecosystem.