India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the country’s second spaceport yesterday, as the country ramps up its space ambitions.
The spaceport will be located at Kulasekharapatnam, a coastal village in Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi district, which has been designed to support smaller rocket launches.
According to the Indian Space Research Organisation, the site was chosen because it offers “strategic advantages” for firms wanting to launch from the site, particularly through enhancing payload capability with its direct southward launch trajectory for small launch vehicles.
While the spaceport is not yet ready for private launches, at the inauguration event, a Rohini Sounding Rocket ‘RH-200’ was launched from a mobile launchpad and reached a peak altitude of 75km that was tracked by two on-site radars.
India has demonstrated significant space ambitions in recent years including undertaking ambitious exploration missions, including the Chandrayaan programme and Mars Orbiter Mission (Mangalyaan).
Chandrayaan-1 was India’s first lunar probe, and Mangalyaan made India the first Asian nation to reach Mars orbit and the fourth space agency globally to do so.
India has also been working towards launching its own crewed space missions. The Gaganyaan mission aims to send Indian astronauts, known as ‘gagannauts’, into space. This initiative is part of India’s vision to become a space power and join the league of nations with indigenous human spaceflight capabilities.
India established its first spaceport, Satish Dhawan Space Centre (initially known as Sriharikota Range), all the way back in 1971. It remained India’s only spaceport until construction started on the Kulasekharapatnam site.
The new spaceport is designed to conduct up to 24 launches a year with an investment of approximately £94m.
Global competition for the space sector is ramping up, with countries around the world attempting to build the infrastructure needed to attract the commercial satellite firms.
The UK has come up with a plan to build seven spaceports in a bid to make it one of Europe’s most enticing countries for the rapidly expanding industry.
In December, the Civil Aviation Authority announced that SaxaVord – the UK’s first vertical rocket launch site – had been granted a spaceport licence “to host up to 30 launches a year”, making it “the first fully licensed vertical spaceport in western Europe”.
