India has been involved in space exploration for many years now, although many still do not include it in the list of major space powers. However, the country’s space ambitions are really big, and reach the creation of its station orbiting the Earth and a base on the surface of the Moon.

India and its space ambitions
On January 15, 2025, two spacecraft of the SpaDeX mission docked in Earth orbit. Not everyone noticed this event against the backdrop of launches by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. However, the Indian space agency ISRO noted it as one of the key steps in the development of its space program. And this transaction may be the beginning of a change in the key players in the space race.
People who are far enough away from the space industry may laugh at India’s plans to join the ranks of the United States, Russia, and China. Everyone knows that India is a country of songs and dances, and they have a lot of hungry people. What do they care about space?
However, statements that India may have its space station and base on the Moon in the coming decades are far from empty talk. But here, we need to talk about everything in turn.

The first rockets and satellites
India’s space program was launched in 1962, just a year after the first human space flight and five years after the first artificial satellite. It was headed by the eminent scientist Satish Dhawan, who at that time had already had considerable experience in the American space program.
In 1969, construction of a spaceport, the future Satish Dhawan Space Center, began on the island of Sriharikota off India’s east coast. In 1971, the first rocket, then a meteorological rocket, was launched from it. The country was slowly gaining the experience to launch spacecraft in-house.
While this process was going on, India built its first satellite, Aryabhata, and launched it on a Soviet rocket in 1975. In doing so, it became the 15th country whose vehicle was able to orbit.

In 1979, the first attempt to launch an Indian spacecraft on its own took place in Sriharikota. Then the attempt of the SLV rocket to put into orbit the satellite “Rohini A1” failed. However, the despair did not last long and on July 18, 1980, the RS-1 successfully reached orbit and India was able to say with full confidence that it had joined the club of space countries.
Four years later, the first Indian astronaut Rakesh Sharma flew on a Soviet spacecraft. Therefore, in such a sensitive area as space, India’s friendship with the US and the USSR is not surprising. The principle of “befriending all but defending only one’s interests” formed the basis of India’s foreign policy at the time of the country’s independence in 1947, and it has remained unchanged ever since.
India’s space leap
After 1984, India’s space program fell into the shadows for two decades. Civilian and military satellites were occasionally launched into space, but many other countries were doing the same. ISRO as a space agency was much less talked about than, for example, Japan’s JAXA.

And then came 2008 and India launched the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. It was an artificial satellite of the Moon, but it had an impact probe on board. It was used to raise a cloud of dust above the surface and use a spectrometer to see traces of water, which was done.
The result of Chandrayaan-1 was not a unique achievement at that time, but something similar could only be demonstrated by NASA and ESA at that time. It was a real “space leap”, and it was only a part of an ambitious program that was just unfolding.
In 2014, ISRO was able to surprise the space community in a big way with the Mangalyaan spacecraft. It successfully entered the orbit of Mars and started taking pictures of its surface. India became the fourth “space player” after the United States, the USSR, and the European Union, whose creation of technical thought reached the Red Planet.

More importantly, India became the first Asian country to realize this. This was a very serious claim to leadership because everyone was sure that their colleagues from China or Japan would be able to do it before the ISRO specialists.
“Chandrayaan-2”
However, not everything was so easy for Indian engineers. And the history of the Chandrayaan-2 and Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is proof of that. The next step after the success of “Chandrayaan-1” should be the landing of a probe on the moon with the delivery of the lunar rover “Pragyan” which was announced back in 2010. The launch was initially planned for 2018.
However, due to delays, it could only take place in 2019. Then India could again surprise everyone, but the device crashed on landing. But as in the case of their satellites, Indian engineers did not fall into despair.

Already in September 2023, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft reached the Moon. It was a copy of Chandrayaan-2 and this time the attempt was successful. The landing of the Indian probe in the circumpolar region of the Moon and the successful detection of water ice made a lot of noise, because almost simultaneously the same tried to do the Russian “Luna-25”, but crashed. The question arose as to which of the two countries would claim to be called a space country in the future.
The secret of Indian success
ISRO’s achievements are not limited to these missions. There was also, for example, Aditya-L1, launched in 2023. The purpose of this mission was to study the Sun’s corona. Moreover, the spacecraft had to do it in the Lagrange point L1 between us and our luminary, that is, it still had to get there. Usually, such scientific vehicles are launched in the United States and Europe and every time it is a great success. But here, India was up to the task.
The secret of India’s successful “leap into space” is that they have a lot of inexpensive but very skilled labor and use relatively inexpensive materials. This does not mean that ISRO has some semi-literate laborers riveting moon rovers out of whatever they can find.

While everyone was laughing at Indian programmers and Indian graduate students in science centers, they were learning. And were able to implement the same solutions used in NASA on a much simpler basis. However, the time when this recipe works for India is steadily passing away and now ISRO faces challenges of a completely different scale.
Indian space
India’s next lunar mission should be the launch of the Chandrayaan-4 spacecraft. In the next few years, it should bring samples of lunar soil to Earth. However, it will no longer be perceived as a sensation, because India has already proved to everyone that it is capable of carrying out complex automatic missions.
At issue is whether Indian astronauts will walk on the Moon once they get there without the help of the US, Russia, or, much less, China.

With all of the above in mind, this idea doesn’t seem so crazy anymore. However, there are several important steps on the way to this achievement. The first is the journey of astronauts to orbit the Earth.
The Gaganyaan spacecraft project has existed since 2006. During this time, the terms of its readiness have been repeatedly postponed and now it is announced that the first manned flight will take place no earlier than 2026. However, this does not mean that ISRO engineers are wishful thinking.
Unlike a lot of other projects, Gaganyaan exists in metal. Its capsule has already been rocket-launched several times, though at a low altitude to check how the structures hold up and the crew’s rescue system works. The crew has already been selected and is preparing for launch.
But there are still to be three unmanned launches first. The first of them, according to the latest announcements, should take place as early as March 1. Of course, things could get postponed again, but frankly speaking, ISRO is not unique, this is how all space agencies work. The cost of error is too high, especially when it comes to manned missions.

If a manned flight of Gaganyaan so happens in the next couple of years, it will definitively mean that any predictions of exploration of the Solar System at all. Really will need to be factored in for India too.
The January 15 docking is a key technology for manned spaceflight in general. Further India wants its orbital station, and it has to be assembled by docking modules, which are essentially slightly simplified spacecraft. If you have to fly to the Moon, there will be a disconnect and docking operation of the landing module.
Of course, there are still a lot of issues to be resolved, but ISRO has already shown that it knows how to achieve results. It is like this everywhere in the modern space industry: everyone knows about the fact that someone has a serious request to achieve something years before they try to realize it. However, the real possibilities are recognized only after success. After that, it is possible to set new tasks and start a new hard way to achieve them.

China has shown that it is not only the United States or the USSR that can implement a manned space program and build an orbital station. This is available to any state that invests resources in the space program for a long time and with intelligence and clearly understands the path to achieve the goal. This is the path India is following and it is not excluded that it will have its space station, to which ships with crews regularly fly, by the end of the decade.
And then the race for managing the Moon and Mars is not far away. ISRO is not far behind its competitors in terms of available technologies for this purpose. It is even possible that the first person to set foot on the surface of the red planet will not be an American or a Chinese, but a citizen of India.