India Has Costliest Rocket Launches in World, Expenses Four Times More than the US, Study Finds

The findings of the study are important for the country’s private space industry, because so far, India’s biggest selling points has been the frugality of its scientific space missions.

The Wire Staff

The findings of the study are important for the country’s private space industry, because so far, India’s biggest selling points has been the frugality of its scientific space missions.

india has costliest rocket launches in world expenses four times more than the us study finds

India's first private rocket Vikram-S built by Skyroot Aerospace lifts off from a launch pad in Sriharikota, November 18, 2022. Photo: Screengrab/ISRO via PTI

New Delhi: A peer reviewed article written by two economists has said that at present India is the most expensive among the six markets capable of launching rockets carrying satellites.

The article, written by economists Alessio Terzi of University of Cambridge, England, and Francesco Nicoli of Politecnico Institute of Turin, Italy, in the September edition of the acclaimed peer-reviewed academic journal Economics Letters highlighted the massive cost of launching a satellite from India, reported Livemint.

According to the article, at the end of 2025, the cost of launching a satellite from India stood at $13,302 (Rs 12.7 lakh) per kg aboard rockets available in the country, an amount that was more than four times the figure of US, wherein the cost is $3,225 (₹3.1 lakh). The study finds the US to be the lowest among all the markets studied.

As per the study, India is more expensive than the European Union, Russia, China and Japan. After India, Europe’s rocket launch cost is the next most expensive at $9,897 (₹9.5 lakh) per kg.

These prices were of launches coordinated by NewSpace India Ltd (Nsil), the commercial arm of government-run space agency Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) – aboard a mix of ISRO’s rockets.

The findings of the study are important for the country’s private space industry, because so far, India’s biggest selling points has been the frugality of its scientific space missions.

“What India needs is an inherent, recurring customer, which in most cases is the government. Commercial clients, to be sure, would be far and few – that’s true for all rocket operators worldwide. What India should work toward is to try lowering its launch costs to match the EU first, and then Japan, to levels of about $7,000 per kg. Rivalling the US is too far into the future, we don’t have the technical capabilities to do that,” said Chaitanya Giri, space fellow at think-tank Observer Research Foundation, reported Livemint.

Two days after Livemint published the report, ISRO chairman Dr V Narayanan, firmly rejected the paper's conclusions and told the publication that the paper used "wrong data", NDTV reported on August 23.

Former ISRO Chairman Dr S Somanath also challenged the interpretation and told NDTV that cost per kilogram does not tell the complete story. He said that for a 4.5 tonne spacecraft, India paid roughly the same launch cost to an American provider as a Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM-3) mission would have cost, suggesting that Indian launch services are broadly comparable to global competitors.

This article was updated on August 24 to include details of the NDTV report including the ISRO chairman's rebuttal.

This article went live on August twenty-first, two thousand twenty six, at thirty-three minutes past four in the afternoon.

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