Facilities Establishment for Small Satellite Manufacturing and Operations

With the privatization of space industry in India, many Non-Government Entities and startups are now working in space domain. It is essential that the private players should have the necessary space grade infrastructure such as PCB and Avionics fabrication facility, test and evaluation lab, Mechanical facility, clean room facility and checkout lab for carrying out spacecraft Assembly Integration and Test activities, environmental test facilities etc., in order to realize satellites end-to-end, from design, develop, fabrication, subsystem and system level tests to launching of the satellites. This paper details about the establishment of the space grade facilities that are required to manufacture small satellites. Also given are the details of establishing Ground Station and Mission Control Centre (MCC), towards independent on-orbit operations of the small satellites. Budget estimate of Capital Expenditures towards establishment of the space grade infrastructure and different facilities are also indicated.