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Outer space, explained.
Awais Ahmed, founder and CEO of Pixxel Space Technologies, overseeing the mission control centre at his office in Bengaluru, India (Idrees Mohammed/AFP via Getty Images)
Fast-growing space ties between Australia and India still lack a shared protocol for when something fails.
A stress test for Australia’s space ties with IndiaA stress test for Australia’s space ties with India
In 2018, while still students at India’s Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal were trying to use satellite imagery to measure chlorophyll in plants. The data they needed did not exist at the resolution and frequency required. That problem led them to found Pixxel the following year (Opens in new window). In January 2025, the Bengaluru firm put three Firefly satellites into orbit, capable of imaging the Earth across more than 150 spectral bands at five-metre resolution (Opens in new window).
Pixxel’s rise shows that Indian firms are no longer simply supplying low-cost engineering. They are creating space technology that can change how countries such as Australia monitor crops, minerals, coastlines and critical infrastructure.
The shift for India becoming a source of capability – not merely a provider of low-cost launch services or a diplomatic partner – is already becoming operational. A new tracking terminal on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands (Opens in new window) will support four planned missions in India’s Gaganyaan human-spaceflight program. Indian astronauts will depend on Australian geography, infrastructure and technical support during critical phases of flight.
But this operational dependence is being assembled one project at a time, while the rules governing failure remain dispersed across contracts, regulation and agency practice.
The relationship is moving quickly. Australia has committed $18 million to three collaborative space projects (Opens in new window), while the Space MAITRI mission will combine an Australian-made spacecraft with Indian launch capability (Opens in new window). Australia is also exploring search-and-rescue support for controlled landings off Western Australia.
Each project creates value, but also new questions about telemetry, data custody, cyber protection, export approval and priority access during a crisis.
A bilateral exercise could simulate a cyber intrusion during a launch, the loss of a commercial satellite service, or damage to a ground station.
The answer is not technological self-sufficiency. Neither country needs to reproduce every launch, tracking or manufacturing capability at home. The more useful goal is secured interdependence: shared systems designed so that both partners understand the risks, retain alternatives and know what support they can expect when disruption occurs.
Canberra and New Delhi should negotiate a bilateral space-assurance protocol. It need not be a grand treaty. It should begin with practical commitments covering cyber incident notification, continuity of tracking and communications, protection and permitted use of mission data, emergency access to ground infrastructure, and rapid licensing for replacement components or services.
The civil and security uses of space cannot be separated neatly. Earth-observation data can support disaster relief and maritime surveillance. Positioning and communications services underpin both everyday commerce and military operations. A useful protocol would acknowledge this overlap without turning every commercial project into a defence program. It would classify obligations according to the sensitivity of data and the consequence of service failure, rather than relying on an artificial civil–military divide.
The protocol should also require joint stress tests. Australia already treats space technology as one of the 11 sectors covered by its critical-infrastructure framework (Opens in new window). A bilateral exercise could simulate a cyber intrusion during a launch, the loss of a commercial satellite service, or damage to a ground station. The purpose would not be to rehearse conflict with a named country. It would be to discover where agencies and companies lack clear authority before a real emergency exposes the gap.
Industry must be included as India’s private space firms mature – Pixxel is one of a growing number attracting serious investment. Much of the relationship between Australia and India’s space sector will be built by firms rather than space agencies, and small companies cannot work through inconsistent security, insurance and export rules project by project. A common assurance standard would reduce that burden while making it easier for governments to distinguish trusted collaboration from unmanaged risk. Over time, shared interdependence could also support Indian Ocean disaster responses by clarifying how satellite data and ground services would be prioritised after a cyclone, tsunami or communications outage.
India brings launch experience, engineering scale and a record of delivering complex missions at relatively low cost. Australia brings strategic geography, ground infrastructure and specialised strengths in spacecraft, sensing and mission support. Their complementarity is the partnership’s advantage. It should not become an unexamined and underexplored terrain.
The Cocos terminal is evidence that Australia and India can trust each other with consequential tasks. Now they need the rules that allow such trust to survive the moment when it matters most.
About the author
Simran Keshwani
Dr Simran Keshwani is a political economist and lecturer whose research examines India’s renewable-energy transition, industrial policy and the geopolitics of clean-energy supply chains spanning South Asia.
