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India taps startups to build ‘bodyguard’ satellites by 2026
India’s security agencies have asked private startups to develop so-called bodyguard satellites to protect high-value spacecraft amid heightened geopolitical tensions.
People familiar with the plans, who asked not to be identified, told Bloomberg that startups aim to launch a test satellite in H1 2026, with additional launches expected by the end of 2026 or early 2027, and Indian government agencies likely to acquire the technology.
The craft are meant to escort and counter orbital threats using kinetic and non-kinetic methods such as robotic arms to hook into and physically move targets or devices that form a box around attacking small satellites and move them away.
The push followed a 2024 near miss in which a spacecraft from an unidentified neighbouring country came within about one kilometre of an Indian satellite, and a research group under India’s defense ministry said in May that China provided Pakistan satellite support during last year’s hostilities.
India has also fast-tracked a Space-Based Surveillance programme that aims to launch more than 50 reconnaissance satellites, is expanding ground stations including overseas locations, and is discussing tracking cooperation with France and the UAE, one person said.
🔗 Source: Bloomberg
🧠 Food for thought
Implications, context, and why it matters.
India is tightening space security as part of a wider defence shift
- The bodyguard satellite plan sits inside a wider space-security effort, including a Space-Based Surveillance programme that plans to launch more than 50 reconnaissance satellites.
- It closes a capability gap with China, which launched 68 spacecraft in 2024 and has put more than 510 satellites with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities into orbit 1.
- China has already used anti-satellite jammers near the India-China border during the 2020 standoff 2.
- The work fits India’s “multi-domain warfare” approach, which ties space and cyber operations to land, air, and sea military domains 3.
Private firms are joining India’s space-defence buildout, with fresh risks in orbit
- By assigning the project to private space startups, India is building a homegrown market for space-security and militarisation-related tools, shaped by national security priorities and policies that back local production 4.
- Government support includes Mission DefSpace, a government initiative that sets out 75 specific challenges to pull in private innovation for defence space capabilities 1.
- Satellites that can move other objects, such as using robotic arms to hook onto and shift a nearby spacecraft, can make offensive-capable systems feel routine in orbit, which blurs the line between a defensive shield and a co-orbital weapon.
- This raises the odds of miscalculation, since another nation could read a defensive manoeuvre as a hostile act, which could spark escalation in space.
