India’s space programme is entering a new phase, but a difficult question is emerging alongside its ambitions: can the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) be expected to concentrate on the country’s most demanding space missions while simultaneously losing some of the infrastructure and expertise developed to deliver them?
A report published by Frontline India has drawn attention to two developments that occurred within weeks of each other. In August 2026, the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center (IN-SPACe) invited private companies to take over the operation and management of the Rs.986-crore Small Satellite Launch Complex at Kulasekarapattinam, a spaceport designed by ISRO. A few weeks earlier, the Department of Space had issued a memorandum dated July 14 that reversed a 2020 reform after ISRO centres had been routinely approving resignations from scientists working on mission-critical projects.
The two decisions are not presented as parts of a single coordinated policy. There is no public evidence that they were planned together. But taken together, the developments raise a broader institutional question: what happens when the organisation responsible for India’s most complex space missions begins to surrender operational control of facilities while losing experienced personnel?
Under the IN-SPACe Expression of Interest, the successful private operator will manage launch campaigns, safety and security, and mission readiness across the 2,233-acre Kulasekarapattinam site. ISRO’s role during the transition will be limited to technical guidance for up to one year or three launch campaigns, whichever comes first.
That arrangement has already prompted questions from retired ISRO officials about the nature of the proposed handover. As reported by The Federal, one senior former ISRO official argued that launch is a professional activity in which safety is paramount and should remain a state responsibility.
The issue extends beyond the question of who operates a launch facility. It concerns who controls infrastructure built with public money and who remains accountable when critical activities are transferred to private companies. The Federal also raised whether IN-SPACe, established to authorise and promote private space activity, has the authority to transfer ISRO-built assets and technology to private operators, or whether it is beginning to function as an asset-divestment channel. Neither the Department of Space secretary nor the IN-SPACe chairman responded to those questions when approached by The Federal.
The government, however, has rejected the idea that ISRO’s personnel losses represent a crisis. Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh, who holds charge of the Department of Space, said in July that the resignations occurred for “administrative reasons, so that the decision can be taken at a much more mature level”. He argued that ISRO’s workforce was large enough that “many have gone, many have come” and said there was “no controversy”.
ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan has similarly described attrition as “part of every organisation”.
But the identity of some of those who left makes the question more complicated. Among the departures reported are Victor Joseph, LVM3 project director; the SpaDeX project director at the U R Rao Satellite Centre; and Aditya Rallapalli, the Chandrayaan-3 scientist who led the simulation team that validated the spacecraft’s lunar landing sequence.
These were not simply anonymous vacancies in a large bureaucracy. They involved personnel associated with some of India’s most demanding technological programmes. The distinction matters because mission-specific knowledge is accumulated over years and cannot necessarily be replaced by treating every departure as an interchangeable movement of staff.
The July memorandum itself reflected the Department of Space’s concern over the pace and nature of resignations. Centre directors had been approving departures, including from personnel associated with Gaganyaan, quickly enough for the department to take that approval authority back.
The scale of the departures is also significant. According to figures reported by national media and attributed to ISRO sources, between 100 and 120 scientists resigned in the months before the July memorandum. Nearly 80 reportedly left the U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru, while at least 20 left the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram.
Parliament has been told that more than 650 scientific and technical staff have left ISRO during the past five years. The organisation is also reported to be short of more than 1,600 sanctioned posts. Across the wider Department of Space, workforce data reported in July 2026 showed 14,637 employees against a sanctioned strength of 20,269 — a fill rate of about 72 per cent, the lowest in twenty-five years.
Those figures have particular relevance because India’s space policy has been moving in the opposite direction. The 2023 Indian Space Policy narrowed ISRO’s role towards research, deep-space missions and human spaceflight, while routine manufacturing and commercial launch activities were pushed towards the private sector.
The policy did not, however, include measures on compensation parity or staff retention. And the personnel reported to have left were associated not with routine activities but with precisely the kinds of technically demanding programmes that the narrower ISRO mandate was intended to protect.
Gaganyaan provides the clearest test. ISRO has been targeting the uncrewed Gaganyaan G1 flight, carrying the Vyommitra half-humanoid, by the end of 2026, after the programme slipped repeatedly from its original 2020 target. Two of the departures reported this year were associated with Gaganyaan-adjacent work.
There is no proof that the delays were caused by staff departures or by the expansion of India’s private space sector. The timing alone cannot establish cause and effect. But the overlap has raised a question that remains unanswered: whether India’s effort to expand commercial space activity is occurring without adequately protecting the institutional expertise required for its most difficult missions.
The financial priorities add another dimension. Under the Union Budget 2026-27, the Department of Space received Rs.13,705.63 crore. NewSpace India Limited, ISRO’s commercial arm, saw its allocation rise from Rs.1,030 crore to Rs.1,403 crore. That funding supported the commercial arm rather than a specific retention package for ISRO’s core scientific staff.
At the same time, the government expects the private sector to transform India’s space economy. Jitendra Singh has said the sector could expand from $8.4 billion to $44 billion by 2033, largely driven by private companies.
Yet much of that private sector draws on people trained at ISRO. If experienced engineers and scientists continue leaving the organisation, the same technical pool on which private space companies depend becomes smaller. The question is therefore not simply whether ISRO should compete with private companies. It is whether the public institution can continue supplying the expertise on which the wider ecosystem increasingly relies.
The international comparison most often invoked is NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services programme, which operated from 2006 to 2013. Private industry delivered two launch vehicles and two cargo spacecraft for about $800 million, while NASA spent $12 billion developing Orion. NASA retained safety-certification authority and systems-engineering expertise, using milestone-based partnerships rather than simply transferring capacity.
India’s proposed arrangement is not identical. The Kulasekarapattinam EoI provides for ISRO technical guidance and training during a transition period. But that period is limited to one year or three launch campaigns. The arrangement, as described in the EoI, does not establish a separate certification authority, a retention package for ISRO scientific staff or a publicly stated position on liability in the event of an accident at a privately managed launch facility.
That leaves the central question unresolved.
The government’s argument is that allowing ISRO to do less routine work will enable it to concentrate on the hardest missions: Gaganyaan, deep-space exploration and human-rating. But the personnel and vacancy figures point towards a potential institutional contradiction. Some of the expertise being lost is concentrated in precisely the areas that the narrower mandate is supposed to preserve.
India’s space programme is therefore confronting a test that goes beyond privatisation. The issue is whether the country can expand commercial participation without weakening the public institution whose technical expertise, infrastructure and experience made that expansion possible.
As Frontline India’s reporting makes clear, the question is not whether private companies have a role in India’s space ambitions. It is whether, in transferring facilities and watching experienced scientists leave, the government is creating a private space industry at the expense of the institutional capacity it still expects ISRO to provide.
For now, the government’s position is that there is “no controversy”. But that does not settle the larger issue: whether ISRO will still possess the people, infrastructure and authority needed to carry out the difficult missions India has asked it to lead.
