Cosmoserve Space, a Hyderabad start-up, has opened “Base 1”. It is billed as India’s first private facility for developing spacecraft that can capture, repair, refuel or de-orbit other satellites. Union Minister Jitendra Singh set out a goal of “debris-free space by 2030”, and Telangana’s IT Minister announced a Space City and a state space-technology policy. The ambitions are large, but the company’s hardware has yet to prove itself in orbit.
Low Earth orbit is getting crowded. Tens of thousands of satellites, spent rocket stages and fragments now circle the planet, and each collision creates more debris. On Thursday, 5 November, a Hyderabad company opened a facility built to address that problem, and the state government used the occasion to make a bid for a larger share of India’s space economy.
Cosmoserve Space inaugurated Base 1, a facility of about 14,800 sq ft at VSD Tech Park in Gachibowli, on 5 November. Telangana IT and Industries Minister D. Sridhar Babu opened it in person, and Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh joined virtually. PTI, UNI and several regional outlets reported the event.
What is inside Base 1
According to the company, the facility houses:
- An Orbital Rendezvous and Capture Laboratory, for testing how one spacecraft approaches and grips another
- A Space Robotics Innovation Laboratory
- Microgravity-simulation platforms, which mimic the weightlessness of orbit on the ground
- An ISO Class 8 clean room for integrating satellites, where airborne particles are tightly controlled
- A mission simulation and control centre
Cosmoserve describes Base 1 as India’s first private facility of its kind and the sixth in the world. NSH has not been able to verify that ranking independently, and it should be read as the company’s claim.
The start-up says it recently raised a seed round of USD 6 million, bringing total funding to more than USD 9 million. It names Pixxel as a partner for satellite systems and Skyroot Aerospace for launch, and says about 60% of its mission components are sourced locally.
How in-orbit servicing works
Most satellites are designed to be abandoned. When fuel runs out or a component fails, they either drift into a “graveyard” orbit or remain where they are as debris. In-orbit servicing aims to change that by sending a robotic spacecraft to meet a client satellite, latch on and then do one of several jobs:
- Refuel it
- Replace a part
- Push it to a new orbit
- Drag it down to burn up in the atmosphere
The hardest step is the rendezvous: matching orbits precisely, approaching a target that may be tumbling and grabbing it without breaking it or creating more debris. Most satellites in orbit were never designed to be grabbed, with no docking ports or handles.
Cosmoserve’s proposed architecture has two parts. A larger “Orbital Service Station” would carry fuel and spares. A smaller “Autonomous Service Vehicle” would fly out to capture, dock with, repair or de-orbit satellites. The company claims this could cut the cost of servicing a satellite from about USD 10 million to under USD 1 million. That figure is a projection, not a demonstrated result.
A test that did not go to plan
The company’s first flight experience is mixed. Its Mission EMBRACE, flown in July 2026, carried soft robotic capture “petals” designed to grip objects in orbit. According to a report on TechnologyForYou, the petals did not deploy as planned, although the flight returned useful data. Cosmoserve says it plans microgravity capture tests, a re-flight of EMBRACE and a full-scale debris-capture demonstration in 2027.
Such setbacks are common in a young field. They are also a reminder that a ground facility, however capable, is a means to an end. The value of Base 1 will be measured by what eventually works in orbit.
Why debris matters to India
Space debris threatens every country’s satellites, but India’s stake is growing. ISRO’s planned Gaganyaan crewed missions will put astronauts in low Earth orbit, where even a centimetre-sized fragment travelling at several kilometres a second can damage a spacecraft. The European Space Agency estimates that more than a million fragments larger than 1 cm are in orbit, most too small to track.
ISRO has its own “Debris Free Space Missions” goal for 2030, under which Indian missions are meant to leave no debris behind, and it runs a space-situational-awareness system to monitor collision risks. Its SpaDeX mission demonstrated autonomous docking between two satellites in January 2025, a capability closely related to servicing.
Jitendra Singh said India “is emerging among the early global pioneers in space debris removal” and called the opening “an important milestone in India’s private space sector”. He put India’s space economy at about USD 9 billion and said it could reach USD 40–45 billion within the coming decade, with about 450 space start-ups now active. These are government estimates.
Telangana’s space push
For Telangana, the event was an opportunity to stake a claim. Sridhar Babu said the state is “now home to over 30 space-tech companies”. He announced two plans:
- A Space City within Bharat Future City, the planned development south of Hyderabad
- A Space Technology Policy, to be framed within a year
No budget, land allocation or timeline beyond that was given.
Hyderabad already has a strong base. Skyroot Aerospace, which flew India’s first privately built rocket in 2022, is based there, and the city hosts major DRDO laboratories and a cluster of precision-engineering suppliers to ISRO. A dedicated policy could help with land, testing infrastructure and incentives. The state will, however, compete with Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, all of which court space companies.
