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On August 23, India marked its third National Space Day, three years since the Chandrayaan-3 mission’s lunar lander ‘Vikram’ touched down in the moon’s south pole region.
Between then and Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace launching India’s first privately built rocket to orbit, India has actually come a long way — even as it is also just beginning to regulate the responsibilities that follow from expanding its orbital footprint.
As part of this endeavour, and days after the success of Vikram-1, the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) released the country’s first guidelines on planned re-entry.
A sustainability problem
For many decades, there were few rocket launches and few new satellites in orbit every year, so there were also few re-entries, and most of them simply burned up in the atmosphere with little consequence. But today, low-earth orbits several thousand satellites, with private companies planning for many, many more. Satellite operators are also deliberately bringing satellites down at the end of their operational lives as part of post-mission disposal in great numbers.
A spacecraft returning to the earth has to negotiate many risks, including deviating from its planned path and breaking up into smaller pieces. It may also affect airspace and maritime zones and potentially crash in the territory or jurisdiction of another state.
Here, the idea of sustainability is important. The UN Guidelines for the Long-term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities define ‘sustainability’ as maintaining space activities while preserving the outer space environment for future generations. In this context, re-entry poses a question: how can an increasingly crowded orbital environment remain usable as more objects are launched, operated, and eventually brought back to the earth?
Therefore, re-entry is a physics problem as well as a governance problem. And the new IN-SPACe guidelines are intended to give Indian operators clarity on how the Indian government expects them to solve these problems.
‘Conditions of permission’
The guidelines have three important elements.
(i) Accountability — Any Indian entity undertaking a planned re-entry, whether within or outside Indian territory, now requires the IN-SPACe’s authorisation. Non-Indian entities seeking to undertake planned re-entry over Indian territory must route the activity through an Indian-incorporated entity, such as a subsidiary, joint venture or partnership, which will be responsible for complying with Indian laws, regulations, and national security requirements.
This has been done because commercialisation creates an accountability gap: i.e. the spacecraft may belong to a private company but the consequences of its return can lie across maritime zones, and jurisdictions. And India has responded by attaching regulatory responsibility to a re-entering entity even before the risk materialises.
Objects designed to survive re-entry or intentionally controlled towards a particular landing or impact area also require separate authorisation. This is what makes a re-entry ‘planned’. On the other hand, objects expected to burn up, melt or fragment sufficiently during natural orbital decay do not count as a planned re-entry.
(ii) Risk must be acceptable — The guidelines say the expected casualty risk must remain below 1 in 10,000, supported by survivability and ground-casualty assessments.
As a result, operators have to analyse failure scenarios, fragmentation patterns, ballistic coefficients, de-orbit plans, flight-path angles, and danger zones, and share the results. They must also identify components likely to survive re-entry and hazardous systems such as batteries and pressure vessels.
By requiring quantitative studies and attaching a number to the acceptable risk threshold, the guidelines make sustainability measurable and thus trackable.
(iii) Permissions —Per the guidelines, IN-SPACe will re-verify the latest re-entry parameters approximately three months before the proposed operation. If planned re-entry is decided upon after launch, the operator must apply at least six months in advance. Operators must also obtain an IN-SPACe advisory note to issue warnings to airborne and marine vessels in the re-entry area at least 45 days before the re-entry begins.
If a re-entry site falls within the territorial control of a non-Indian state, including in its exclusive economic zones, the applicant must also submit the relevant clearance or authorisation from that state.
Changes to the approved trajectory, timing or danger zone may also demand revised notifications and changes to the authorisation.
These checkpoints ensure that the regulator has fixed windows and mechanisms to intervene when the re-entry parameters change after the mission has launched or the risk pattern has changed for some reason.
Soft law to domestic rule
For nearly two decades, the international community has developed principles for sustainable space activities. Notable among them are the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee’s ‘Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines’ and the ‘Guidelines for the Long-term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities’ of the U.N. Committee for the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Article IX of the Outer Space Treaty 1967 also provides an important foundation for environmental responsibility.
However, most of the contemporary sustainability architecture works on guidelines and other similar forms of ‘soft law’, which operators are not obligated to follow.
The IN-SPACe guidelines solve this problem for India by tying an operator’s fragmentation analysis and insurance policies to the national regulator.
The guidelines also address the financial risks that follow from the Space Liability Convention 1972, which places absolute liability on a launching state for damage caused by its space object on the surface of the earth or to aircraft in flight.
The IN-SPACe guidelines, on the other hand, require operators to undertake planned re-entries at their own risk and say they remain liable for third-party damage and claims. They also indemnify the Government of India and its agencies for liability incurred under India’s international commitments while satisfying the applicable third-party insurance requirements.
Taken together, the IN-SPACe guidelines translate international principles into obligations that private operators in India must satisfy before the government gives them permission to act.
Shrawani Shagun is a researcher focusing on environmental sustainability and space governance.
Published – August 24, 2026 09:00 am IST
