Megaconstellations to Strain Bharatiya Antariksh Station Operations

As megaconstellations crowd low-Earth orbit, India’s Bharatiya Antariksh Station may enter a future where debris, risk, and uninsurability define access to space.

Three Chinese taikonauts, members of the Shenzhou-20 crew, supposed to return from the Tiangong Space Station to China on 5 November 2025, are now supposed to be indefinitely stranded in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO). The crew return capsule, as informed by the China Manned Space Agency, has supposedly been impacted by a small space debris, and this impacted capsule would return to Earth without the taikonauts. This is not the first time the Tiangong has been snagged in this manner. In 2023, the Chinese space station’s solar panels were struck by debris, leading to a partial power outage. The International Space Station (ISS), which also operates in LEO, has become increasingly vulnerable. In the past decade, the International Space Station (ISS) was manoeuvred on many occasions to avoid getting hit by space debris, and in some instances, getting hit by it. The LEO will get more swamped with satellites in the coming years, and the Bharatiya Antariksh Station - India’s space station - would have to operate in an even more dangerous LEO, as none of the space-capable governments are eager to tame their uninhibited appetite for raising satellite megaconstellations.

Read the original and longer version of this Expert Speak - cowritten with Tara Chawla - on the Observer Research Foundation website through this weblink - https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/megaconstellations-to-strain-bharatiya-antariksh-station-operations