ISpA suggests setting up Space Technology Parks to boost private sector

The Indian Space Association (ISpA) on Wednesday suggested setting up Space Technology Parks, on the lines of IT Parks and industrial corridors, to give impetus to the country's nascent private space industry.

In a concept paper titled 'Space Technology Parks To Energize Aatmanirbhar Bharat in Space Domain', the private space industry body said that Space Technology Parks (STP) were essential to drive economic growth, bring significant socio-economic impact, create new jobs and foster innovation in the space sector.

''The development of STP is a critical step in the advancement of the country's space industry and will have far-reaching impacts on the economy, infrastructure, and quality of life in the years to come,'' Lt Gen A K Bhatt (retd.), the Director General of ISpA, said.

The concept paper flagged concerns on certain clauses of the draft Space Activities Bill that states that any intellectual property right developed, generated or created onboard a space object in outer space, shall be deemed to be the property of the central government.

''Private parties, including space startups, have been quite dissatisfied with this because it forbids them from commercialising any current space-related intellectual property rights or any research they might conduct while engaging in space operations,'' the ISpA said.

The industry body suggested focusing on incubation and innovation centres to help create an environment and tools for improving the priority areas and objectives aligned with the technological and strategic needs of the country.

''As the STPs would be ground infrastructure-heavy, this would require the creation of building capabilities from scratch and would need major investments. Availability of logistic hubs, transportation and facilitation of Space Parks are some of the initial developments required,'' it said.

The ISpA also suggested setting up test services including wind tunnel facility, central instrument facility, computation cluster & data centres with advanced facilities in STPs.

It also recommended to include a single-window mechanism for the entire space ecosystem to have transparency throughout the entire development process.

The ISpA also suggested that the creation of an STP Authority would serve as a single window to Space Technology Park for all the stakeholders involved in the space sector, providing a streamlined and efficient approach to handling the various needs and requirements of the industry.

It suggested developing a regulatory sandbox to foster space technology innovation by establishing a controlled, safe testing environment during the development and pre-marketing phase.

The ISpA also recommended that India focus on citizen science projects and Open-Source Policy for the space sector as was already done by NASA and the European Space Agency.

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