Image caption: ISRO advances the Bharatiya Antariksha Station, with its first module BAS-01 targeted for launch in December 2028.
AHMEDABAD: India’s space agency used the third National Space Day to reassert one of its most ambitious commitments yet: an indigenous space station in orbit by 2035. Speaking at the Space Applications Centre on August 23, ISRO Chairman and Department of Space Secretary Dr V. Narayanan confirmed that the government has formally approved the first module of the Bharatiya Antariksha Station (BAS), moving the programme from a policy proposal into an actively funded engineering effort.
“We are also working towards establishing our own space station, the Bharatiya Antariksha Station,” Narayanan told the gathering, held under the theme “Towards Viksit Bharat: Innovating, Collaborating and Aspiring to Global Space Leadership.” “The first module has already been approved, and we aim to establish the space station by 2035.”
A Reaffirmation, Not a New Announcement
It is worth being precise about what changed and what did not. The actual government sanction for BAS traces back to a Union Cabinet decision on September 18, 2024, which expanded the Gaganyaan Human Spaceflight Programme’s scope to include the station’s foundational module, BAS-01, and added ₹11,170 crore to the programme’s budget. Narayanan’s August 2026 remarks function as a status update confirming that this two-year-old approval remains on track, with BAS-01 still targeted for orbital launch in December 2028. The base module alone carries an allocated cost of roughly ₹1,763 crore.
Five Modules, One Sovereign Outpost
The completed station, expected by 2035, will comprise five modules assembled in Low Earth Orbit at 400-450 km altitude, together weighing around 52 tonnes with a pressurised volume of 265 cubic metres. It is designed to house three to four astronauts for expeditions of three to six months, with capacity for up to six during crew handovers. BAS-01, the base module carrying power and propulsion systems, weighs just over 9 tonnes and will fly on the operational LVM3 rocket. Later, heavier modules, the science, lab and berthing modules, each exceed 10.6 tonnes and will require the semi-cryogenic LVM3-SC variant currently under development.
Proof of Concept Already in Orbit
Encouragingly, the technology needed to physically assemble such a station has already been flight-tested. The Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX), launched in December 2024, put two small spacecraft through a full docking sequence: approaching from 20 km apart, latching together, transferring power between craft, undocking and successfully re-docking by April 2025. The indigenous Bharatiya Docking System that made this possible uses a compact 450 mm mechanism driven by just two motors, notably simpler than the 800 mm, 24-motor international docking standard. This validated capability removes one of the biggest technical unknowns in orbital station assembly.
Riding on Gaganyaan’s Shoulders
Rather than standing up a separate programme, BAS has been folded into an expanded Gaganyaan effort, now covering eight missions instead of the original three: four dedicated to human spaceflight qualification and four to validating docking, life support and orbital logistics ahead of BAS-01’s launch. This lets the station programme draw directly on Gaganyaan’s human-rated LVM3 rocket, its crew module life-support architecture, and the astronaut training infrastructure at the Human Space Flight Centre in Bengaluru, rather than building these capabilities from scratch.
Filling the Gap Left by the ISS
The station’s strategic timing is notable. With the International Space Station expected to wind down operations around 2030, the global landscape for continuous human presence in orbit is shifting toward sovereign and commercial platforms, including China’s Tiangong station. An operational BAS would give India independent, uninterrupted access to microgravity research in fields ranging from space medicine and materials science to plant biology and Earth observation, without relying on foreign platforms. The station also serves as a deliberate stepping stone within Space Vision 2047, which sequences BAS’s completion in 2035 toward a crewed lunar flyby the same year and an indigenous crewed Moon landing by 2040.
The Hard Engineering Still Ahead
None of this is guaranteed to arrive on schedule. The current LVM3 rocket tops out at 8-10 tonnes to LEO, meaning three of the station’s five modules cannot fly until the semi-cryogenic upper stage or the still-newer Next Generation Launch Vehicle is flight-qualified. Equally demanding is the shift from the open-loop life support systems adequate for Gaganyaan’s short missions to fully regenerative systems capable of recycling air and water over months at a time, a jump ISRO has flagged as under active development rather than resolved. Extra-vehicular activity hardware, including indigenous spacesuits and airlocks, remains at the design stage. Meanwhile, questions such as the total capital cost through 2035, whether international partners will contribute modules and whether private companies will handle cargo or crew resupply remain unanswered in public disclosures.
What Comes Next
For now, the milestone that matters most is December 2028, when BAS-01 is due to reach orbit and give India its first physical foothold in the programme. Between now and then, progress on the semi-cryogenic engine, life-support scaling, and the growing role of private industry under IN-SPACe will determine whether the 2035 target holds, or whether, like many ambitious space timelines before it, it quietly slips.
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