Space: the next ‘frontier’ of UK–India cooperation?

Simran Brookes

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Recent years have seen sustained efforts to enhance UK–India ties under the umbrella of their Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, established in May 2021, and guided thus far by their unprecedented and ambitious 2030 Roadmap for future relations. Although attention has largely focused on enhancing trade and defence cooperation, rhetoric on technology cooperation, including the space domain, has quietly increased as well. Recent statements suggest this could be the next priority area, signalling an ambition to cooperate in new and increasingly critical areas and potentially strengthening the strategic dimension of the UK–India partnership.

Space as a growing considerationIndia’s Chandrayaan-3 mission made history in August 2023 as the first spacecraft to land on the moon’s south-pole region, making India the fourth country to achieve a soft lunar landing. The mission showcased India’s scientific and technological capabilities and signalled its ambitions to become a leading space nation.

Indeed, India’s 2020 Spacecom policy recognises that space is becoming a ‘vital frontier for strategic applications’ and that India needs to augment its space capabilities to ‘ensure its national security and sovereignty’. The same year, India also established a New and Emerging Strategic Technologies division within its Ministry of External Affairs to collaborate with foreign governments and seek technology exchange in emerging areas, including that of space.

Similarly, the UK’s 2021 Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy identified space as one of the ‘future frontiers’ for shaping the ‘open international order’. At the relaunch of the UK’s National Space Council in July 2023, the government announced plans to make the UK a globally competitive ‘space superpower’. Notably, among the other ‘key space leaders’ with which it plans to keep pace, it made explicit reference to only two such countries – the US, its closest ally, and India, indicating the growing importance that the UK places on India within this domain.