Hyderabad: India's space technology sector took a significant step forward on Thursday with the unveiling of Base 1, a new facility in Hyderabad built to develop technologies for removing space debris and servicing satellites in orbit. The facility, set up by spacetech startup Cosmoserve Space, has been described as India's first private facility of its kind and the sixth in the world equipped with space vision effects and microgravity simulation.
Base 1 was inaugurated on Thursday by Telangana IT and Industries Minister D Sridhar Babu, Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh, and Cosmoserve Space founder and chief executive Chiranjeevi Phanindra. The launch was accompanied by the announcement of a six million dollar seed funding round led by Japan-based Rebright Partners, taking the company's total funding to more than nine million dollars.
The facility brings together, under one roof, the infrastructure needed to design, build, test and operate satellite servicing and space debris recovery missions. It houses four key units: an Orbital Rendezvous and Capture Lab to simulate spacecraft capture operations, a Space Robotics Innovation Lab to develop robotic capture systems, an ISO Class 8 clean room for satellite integration, and a Mission Simulation and Control Centre to manage upcoming missions.
Beyond removing debris, the facility will support satellite servicing, including in-orbit repairs and refuelling, and the removal of inactive satellites from orbit.
Space debris has become one of the most pressing problems facing the space industry. Thousands of defunct satellites, spent rocket stages and fragments from collisions and break-ups now circle the Earth, and each one travels fast enough to damage or destroy an active satellite on impact. As more countries and companies launch satellites, the risk of collisions grows, and with it the risk of a cascade in which each collision creates more debris.
The ability to capture and remove dead satellites, and to repair and refuel working ones instead of abandoning them, is increasingly seen as essential to keeping Earth's orbits usable.
That is the market Cosmoserve is aiming at. "Base 1 is where we build the capability to keep orbits usable, for Gaganyaan, the Bharatiya Antariksh Station and every satellite that follows," Phanindra said at the launch. The company's dual-spacecraft architecture is designed to enable just two spacecraft to service up to 100 satellites, potentially bringing servicing costs down from around ten million dollars to below one million dollars per satellite.
Cosmoserve says it will start commercial operations by mid-2028, opening its doors to a global market projected to reach 14.5 billion dollars by 2030.
The company's plans follow a rapid rise. Cosmoserve was founded in June 2025 by Phanindra, who spent close to 15 years with the Indian Space Research Organisation before setting up the startup. In July 2026, it flew its first payload, Mission Embrace, aboard Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 rocket.
Its upcoming milestones include testing its robotic capture systems during microgravity flights, re-flying Mission Embrace, and conducting a full-scale space debris capture demonstration in 2027. A further technology demonstration mission is planned by mid-2027, with the first commercial mission targeted for early 2028.
The facility was built at a cost of around six crore rupees, according to the company, and it currently sources close to 60 per cent of its mission components locally, with plans to manufacture more in-house. That emphasis on indigenous manufacturing fits with the wider push to build a domestic spacetech supply chain, reducing dependence on imported components and bringing down costs.
For a startup founded only last year, the speed from incorporation to a working facility and a funded demonstration programme has been striking.
The launch also underlines Hyderabad's growing position as a hub for space technology in India. The city is now home to more than 30 spacetech companies, including India's first spacetech unicorn and several more firms approaching that valuation.
The presence of established research institutions, a skilled engineering workforce and supportive state policies has helped the cluster grow, and the unveiling of Base 1 adds a new capability — active debris removal and in-orbit servicing — to the city's portfolio. Officials at the event pointed to the concentration of spacetech firms as evidence that Hyderabad is leading the country in space innovation.
The facility's backers see its significance in national terms as well. India's human spaceflight programme, Gaganyaan, and the planned Bharatiya Antariksh Station will both operate in orbits that are becoming more crowded each year. Keeping those orbits safe requires not only tracking debris but actively removing the most dangerous objects and extending the lives of satellites through servicing.
A domestic capability in this area would reduce India's dependence on foreign providers for services that are likely to become a routine part of operating in space.
There are, however, considerable technical hurdles still to be cleared. Capturing a defunct satellite that may be tumbling uncontrolled, at speeds of thousands of kilometres per hour, is one of the hardest tasks in space engineering. No large piece of legacy debris has yet been removed from orbit by any operator, and the first real captures are expected only around the same window as Cosmoserve's planned 2027 demonstration.
The company's soft robotic capture technology, which it aims to validate on upcoming flights, will need to prove itself in the harsh conditions of orbit before commercial customers commit.
The funding round announced alongside the facility suggests investors are willing to back that bet. The six million dollar seed round, led by Rebright Partners, takes Cosmoserve's total funding past nine million dollars, giving it the resources to complete its technology demonstrations by 2027 and move towards commercial operations the following year. The company says it will complete all its technology demonstrations by 2027, a timetable that leaves little room for delay.
For India's spacetech ecosystem, Base 1 is both a milestone and a test. It shows that a young Indian startup can build world-class ground infrastructure for a frontier technology, attract international capital, and set out a credible path to commercial operations. Whether it can deliver on the harder promise — capturing a dead satellite in orbit — will be judged by the demonstrations planned over the next two years.
For now, Hyderabad has a new facility, a funded plan, and a place in a race that the world's spacefaring nations are all running.
(Reporting based on NDTV and Business Standard.)