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India recently celebrated its Independence Day on August 15, marking 79 years of progress in various fields, including aeronautics and scientific research. The country has transformed from having limited technological resources to working towards its next landmark, establishing a fully operational space station, Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS), by 2035. It is actively growing through both private and government initiatives.
While space exploration in the 1980s and 1990s relied on early pattern recognition and image processing, India began heavily incorporating advanced, mission-critical AI around 2019 with the Chandrayaan-2 lunar rover. The country has since used the technology across various operations, including autonomous landing, spacecraft health monitoring, robotic automation, and earth observation.
AI is one of the most complex inventions with the potential to integrate other modern technologies to accelerate research and achieve breakthroughs. It can help India streamline outer space operations, capture and process real-time visual data through edge computing, and manage satellite trajectories.
AI also enables spacecraft to make autonomous decisions, eliminating the need to communicate with the ground team for every situation it encounters. This saves resources and time that would otherwise be spent on back and forth, and equips them to adapt readily to changing environments.
The Space Docking Experiment (SpaDex) is a great example of ISRO successfully executing fully autonomous rendezvous, docking, undocking, and circumnavigation between two independent satellites in Low Earth Orbit. Such missions are central to India as it integrates AI not only to achieve efficiency but to implement high-precision, deep-space missions where human intervention is impossible.
Over the years, ISRO has combined AI with satellite engineering, robotics, and advanced data processing to ensure Indian space missions are efficient and capable of competing with other leading institutions such as NASA, CNSA, Roscosmos, ESA, and JAXA. Some initiatives where AI has played a major role include:
SpaDeX was launched aboard ISRO's PSLV-C60 on 30 December 2024. Through this mission, ISRO demonstrated fully autonomous rendezvous, docking, and undocking between satellites SDX01 and SDX02 in Low Earth Orbit.
Rendezvous: Finding and catching up to another spacecraft in space until both are flying side-by-side.
Docking: Physically connecting two spacecraft in orbit so they lock tight and can transfer power, fuel, or crew.
Undocking: Unlocking and safely separating the two spacecraft so they can fly away independently.
The mission involved multiple sensors such as Laser Range Finder, Rendezvous Sensor, and Proximity & Docking Sensors, feeding data to a Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) system. The onboard algorithms continuously calculated the relative position and velocity of the two spacecraft for autonomous navigation and decision-making.
As they closed the distance, the onboard GNC system autonomously managed the final approach until a docking mechanism secured the connection. While the first docking required manual intervention, the second docking on April 20, 2025, was completely autonomous, making India the fourth nation to demonstrate space docking capability.
POEM-4 used the spent fourth stage of PSLV-C60, the launch vehicle that carried the SpaDeX mission into orbit. ISRO repurposed it as an in-orbit experimental platform carrying 24 payloads -14 from ISRO and 10 from non-government academic institutions and startups.
AI featured mainly through the MOI-TD (Mission Operations Indicator–Technology Demonstrator) payload, developed by Hyderabad-based startup TakeMe2Space. ISRO describes it as an ‘AI lab in space’ that performed real-time Earth-observation data processing.
Three ML models were uploaded from the ground, executed onboard, and their inferences were downlinked. AI techniques were also used to process camera feeds to detect and capture daytime and nighttime Earth images with optimal sharpness.
POEM-4 carried India’s first space robotic arm, RRM-TD (Relocatable Robotic Manipulator-Technology Demonstrator), and a debris capture manipulator. The robotic arm used visual data and autonomous positioning loops to safely unlock from its base station, perform 7-degree-of-freedom maneuvers (like inspecting the POEM deck), and securely lock back into its original base position.
By proving that AI models can be successfully updated and executed on a rocket stage in space, POEM-4 paves the way for future ISRO missions like the BAS. This marks another step towards using AI for automated debris avoidance, self-contained health monitoring, and instant on-board image analysis.
Gaganyaan is India’s first human spaceflight program, designed to send Indian astronauts to Low Earth Orbit and safely return them to Earth. AI and machine-learning technologies are being incorporated into the program for applications such as autonomous operations, mission trajectory design and spacecraft health monitoring, where it is technically appropriate.
AI and ML are increasingly being used to analyze the data collected by India’s Earth-observation satellites such as RISAT & Oceansat series. ISRO uses these technologies for applications including object and change detection, crop-yield prediction, weather forecasting, disaster forecasting, and land-use mapping. AI’s main role in this context is to help process large volumes of satellite data and turn it into useful insights more quickly.
However, it is developing AI-enabled onboard processing for future Earth-observation missions, allowing satellite imagery to be analysed in orbit rather than sending all raw data to the ground. AI models could identify specific features, such as fire zones or other objects, and transmit only relevant information, reducing data volume and enabling faster access to useful observations.
India’s private sector space organizations are equally leveraging AI, particularly in Earth-observation analytics, satellite data processing and edge computing.
SatSure uses AI, machine learning and satellite data to generate insights for applications such as agriculture, infrastructure, climate and sustainability.
GalaxEye is developing multi-sensor Earth-observation systems with advanced processing capabilities for near-real-time data delivery. It also won an iDEX challenge related to satellite edge computing.
Pixxel uses hyperspectral satellite data for agriculture, mining and environmental monitoring. Its Earth Observation Studio, Aurora, is designed to make this data more interpretable and useful. Its consortium with SatSure, Dhruva Space and PierSight is also building India's privately led EO constellation.
If India plans on expanding AI usage in space missions, it will also need to address several technical, operational, and security challenges before the technology can be deployed reliably at scale.
Limited Computing Resources: Spacecraft have strict limits on power, memory, and processing capacity. Running AI models onboard therefore requires specialised, energy-efficient hardware.
Reliability and Safety: AI systems must be extensively tested and validated because a wrong decision in space can have serious consequences, while repairing or replacing hardware after launch is difficult.
Radiation and Hardware Constraints: Space radiation can damage or disrupt electronic components. AI processors and memory systems must therefore be designed and tested to operate reliably in the space environment.
Data Availability and Quality: AI depends on reliable, representative datasets. Collecting and validating data for rare or unpredictable space conditions can be challenging.
Cybersecurity and Human Oversight: Increasing spacecraft autonomy creates new cybersecurity risks, while critical AI decisions may still require human supervision and clear understanding of how the system reached its conclusions.
However, if we overcome these challenges, AI can help India achieve greater autonomy in deep-space missions. It could also strengthen the country’s position in advanced space technology and create economic opportunities by driving demand for specialized hardware, software and AI solutions. This might encourage private-sector innovation and open new markets for Indian space companies.
At a global level, stronger capabilities in AI-driven space technology could strengthen India’s position as a competitive spacefaring nation and create opportunities to provide space-based services to other countries. To achieve this, the country will also need clearer rules and standards for the private space sector, especially around safety, data use, cybersecurity, liability and the responsible use of autonomous systems.
