For more than two decades, the International Space Station (ISS) has been the most visible symbol of international cooperation beyond Earth. Bringing together the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada, it demonstrated that states with very different geopolitical interests could maintain a complex, permanently inhabited scientific infrastructure in orbit. Yet the ISS is approaching the final phase of its operational life. NASA currently plans for ISS operations to conclude around 2030, while preparations for its controlled deorbit are already under way. SpaceX has been selected to develop the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle intended to help bring the station safely down over a remote ocean area. NASA's planning consequently envisages a transition from the ISS towards commercial destinations in low-Earth orbit. (NASA)
The end of the ISS, however, does not mean the end of permanent human activity in low-Earth orbit (LEO). Rather, it is likely to mark a transition from the era of one dominant multinational space station toward a more fragmented ecosystem of national, multinational and commercial orbital platforms. This transformation is relevant not only for the traditional space powers but also for emerging space actors such as India and Türkiye. Türkiye has itself entered a new stage of its space programme through the establishment of the Turkish Space Agency (TUA), the National Space Programme, the İMECE Earth-observation satellite, the indigenous TÜRKSAT 6A communications satellite, the Turkish Astronaut and Science Mission and preparations for a lunar research mission. Türkiye's National Space Programme specifically identifies indigenous technological capability, reduced external dependence, access to space and development of the national space ecosystem among its strategic objectives. (Turkish Space Agency)
NASA itself is preparing for this change by supporting several privately operated commercial stations. China already operates its Tiangong space station independently. Europe is exploring commercial arrangements for maintaining access to LEO after the ISS. Other countries are considering their own capabilities. Among these emerging actors, perhaps the most strategically significant development is taking place in India.
India Moves from Space Missions to Space Infrastructure
India's space programme has historically been associated with cost-efficient satellite launches, telecommunications, Earth observation and increasingly ambitious planetary missions. Chandrayaan-3's successful lunar landing significantly enhanced India's international standing as a space power. Yet the next stage of India's programme represents something qualitatively different: India is seeking not simply to conduct missions in space, but to create permanent national infrastructure in orbit.
At the centre of this transformation is the Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS), India's planned indigenous modular space station.
The Indian government stated in July 2026 that BAS will consist of five modules, with the completed station targeted for establishment by 2035. More importantly, the project has now progressed beyond a broad political declaration. According to a written reply to India's Parliament, ISRO has completed the Baseline Design Review and System Engineering for the first module, BAS-01. Thirty-one baseline design documents have been released, an expert committee has completed its review, and design work on the station's subsystems has commenced.
The first BAS module is scheduled for launch in 2028, following Cabinet approval of BAS-01 as part of the expanded Gaganyaan programme. Thus, the path towards the station is deliberately incremental rather than based upon a single spectacular launch.
This is strategically important. India is constructing an integrated human-spaceflight architecture in which Gaganyaan, docking technology, launch vehicles, crew recovery, life-support systems, orbital research and BAS reinforce one another.
Gaganyaan as the Technological Foundation
The Bharatiya Antariksh Station cannot be understood separately from Gaganyaan, India's programme to develop an independent human-spaceflight capability.
India's Department of Space identifies technologies developed through Gaganyaan—including the Human Rated Launch Vehicle, orbital module, Crew Escape System, communications networks, ground infrastructure, flight operations and crew recovery systems—as foundations upon which BAS will subsequently be constructed. ISRO has also developed the electrical and mechanical interfaces needed for orbital docking and successfully demonstrated a concept for an in-space refuelling mechanism.
Testing continues at several levels. In July 2026, ISRO successfully tested the solid motor for its new Sub-Orbital Launch Vehicle for Experiments, or SOLVE, which is being developed to reproduce different conditions for validating Gaganyaan's parachute and crew-module deceleration systems. The eventual crew capsule relies upon a sequence of ten parachutes during descent and recovery.
Another particularly important breakthrough has been SpaDeX, ISRO's Space Docking Experiment. ISRO successfully docked its two SpaDeX spacecraft in January 2025. Docking represents an essential technology for India's future human-spaceflight architecture because a modular station requires spacecraft launched separately to rendezvous and connect in orbit. (ISRO)
Robotics research is similarly being aligned with the future station. Experiments conducted through India's PSLV Orbital Experimental Module have investigated technologies relevant to BAS, including robotic-arm operation in microgravity, autonomous visual inspection, manipulation, tele-operation and digital-twin applications. ISRO explicitly describes some of these experiments as precursor technology demonstrations for BAS. (ISRO)
Taken together, these developments suggest that the Bharatiya Antariksh Station is becoming an umbrella programme capable of organising India's previously separate capabilities into a long-term national human-spaceflight strategy.
Strategic Autonomy—but not Isolation
The adjective indigenous is central to India's vision. The government has explicitly linked BAS with self-reliance in critical human-spaceflight technologies and high-technology manufacturing. Some components currently used for Gaganyaan—including flight suits, viewports and crew seats—are obtained externally, but indigenous replacements have been approved and prototype development is underway.
Yet India's concept of strategic autonomy should not automatically be interpreted as technological isolation.
India's recent trajectory combines domestic capability-building with selective international cooperation. Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla's participation in the Axiom-4 mission to the ISS provided direct human-spaceflight experience within the existing multinational orbital system. Meanwhile, India has been expanding cooperation with the United States and other international partners in space research.
This combination—national capabilities plus diversified international partnerships—could ultimately make BAS particularly interesting for middle powers that lack the resources to construct independent stations themselves.
India could eventually offer scientific experiments, astronaut missions, commercial services or research opportunities to countries across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the wider Global South. If this occurs, BAS would acquire diplomatic as well as technological significance.
India's Expanding Commercial Ecosystem
A second structural change is the increasingly important role of India's private space sector.
Reuters reported in July 2026 that Skyroot Aerospace was preparing the Vikram-1 rocket for what would be the first attempt by an Indian private company to place a satellite directly into orbit. The company was founded by former ISRO engineers and is part of a broader policy opening India's historically state-dominated space economy to commercial participation. India aims to develop a space economy worth approximately $44 billion by 2033. (Reuters)
This commercialisation matters for BAS because sustainable orbital infrastructure requires more than a government space agency. Launch services, components, software, communications, materials, robotics, life-support technologies and eventually cargo services can create supply chains extending far beyond ISRO.
India is therefore following a broader global trend: space stations are becoming platforms around which space economies are organised.
There are nevertheless risks. Human-rated systems require extraordinary reliability; delays in Gaganyaan could affect BAS schedules; sustaining a five-module station will require repeated launches and long-term financing; and India's private sector must still develop considerably before matching the scale of American commercial space companies. The 2035 target should therefore be viewed as ambitious rather than automatic.
From one International Space Station to Many Space Stations
The disappearance of the ISS may consequently create a fundamentally different orbital order.
Rather than a single flagship international station, the 2030s may feature several parallel systems.
China's Tiangong Space Station already provides China with an independently operated orbital laboratory and could increasingly host experiments or astronauts involving international partners. China's human-spaceflight authorities continue regular crewed operations aboard the station.
Axiom Station is being developed through cooperation with NASA. Its architecture is designed around modules that can initially operate in association with the ISS before ultimately becoming an independent commercial station. NASA's post-ISS planning places Axiom alongside several free-flying commercial destination concepts. (NASA)
Starlab, another NASA-supported project, is designed as a commercial research and habitation platform and forms part of the American effort to maintain a continuous human presence in low-Earth orbit after the ISS. (NASA)
Blue Origin's Orbital Reef is envisioned as a multipurpose commercial station supporting research, habitation and commercial activity and is similarly part of NASA's Commercial LEO Destinations architecture. (NASA)
Vast's Haven-1 represents another model: a smaller commercial station intended to support astronauts, microgravity research and in-space manufacturing while contributing to the longer-term development of larger orbital infrastructure.
Europe, meanwhile, is preparing for continued access to LEO through commercial services after the ISS rather than necessarily constructing a completely independent European equivalent. The broader implication is that Europe may increasingly act as a customer, partner and technology provider within a commercially diversified orbital ecosystem rather than simply reproducing the institutional model of the ISS.
Conclusion: The Geopolitics of Orbital Infrastructure
The International Space Station represented the geopolitical conditions of the post-Cold War period: expensive infrastructure shared primarily among major established space powers. Its successors are likely to reflect a more multipolar global order.
The future of low-Earth orbit may consist simultaneously of Chinese national infrastructure, American-led commercial stations, European partnerships and an increasingly capable Indian programme. At the same time, emerging space actors such as Türkiye will need to determine where they position themselves within this new architecture.
In this emerging environment, India's Bharatiya Antariksh Station deserves particular attention. BAS is not simply another symbolic project in the global space race. If the first module launches as planned in 2028 and the five-module station develops towards 2035, India will have transformed itself from a highly successful launcher and scientific-space power into an operator of permanent human orbital infrastructure.
More importantly, what India is doing today provides a revealing indication of how New Delhi is preparing for the 2030s. Gaganyaan develops human-spaceflight capability; SpaDeX develops orbital rendezvous and docking; robotic experiments prepare technologies relevant to station assembly and maintenance; BAS provides the long-term orbital destination; and private companies are gradually being integrated into launch, manufacturing and commercial space activities. Rather than approaching these projects individually, India increasingly appears to be creating an interconnected national space ecosystem capable of supporting a sustained presence in low-Earth orbit.
That development would have consequences extending well beyond space science. It would strengthen Indian strategic autonomy, develop high-technology industries, create commercial opportunities, expand India's diplomatic influence and potentially provide new countries with access to human spaceflight. India's preparations therefore demonstrate how space policy can increasingly combine technology, industrial policy, strategic autonomy, international diplomacy and commercial development.
Türkiye should carefully follow precisely these developments. Türkiye is certainly not starting from zero. Its National Space Programme places indigenous technological development and reduced foreign dependence among its objectives; İMECE has demonstrated indigenous Earth-observation capabilities; TÜRKSAT 6A represents an important step in nationally developed communications-satellite technology; and Türkiye has now accumulated human-spaceflight and microgravity research experience through Alper Gezeravcı's ISS mission and Tuva Cihangir Atasever's suborbital research flight. (Turkish Space Agency)
Furthermore, Türkiye is preparing its next major step through the Lunar Research Programme. The Turkish Space Agency lists AYAP-1 among its ongoing flagship projects, while Turkish officials stated in April 2026 that the lunar mission was being targeted for 2027 and would incorporate a domestically developed hybrid propulsion system for the transfer towards the Moon. (Turkish Space Agency)
India is therefore particularly relevant for Türkiye not because the two countries possess identical space programmes or financial capacities, but because India's trajectory illustrates how an emerging power can gradually connect satellites, launch technologies, astronauts, scientific experiments, private companies and eventually orbital infrastructure into a broader national strategy. For Türkiye, closely examining BAS, Gaganyaan, India's private space ecosystem and the other post-ISS station projects could consequently provide useful lessons when determining its own priorities for the 2030s.
Türkiye will also host the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) 2026 in Antalya, an opportunity directly connected by the Turkish Space Agency to the National Space Programme's objectives of increasing space awareness and developing Türkiye's space ecosystem. This makes the present period particularly appropriate for a deeper Turkish discussion about the country's longer-term role within the rapidly changing international space economy. (Turkish Space Agency)
The end of the ISS, therefore, should perhaps be understood less as the conclusion of an era than as the beginning of another: from the International Space Station to an international system of space stations. India is already preparing systematically for that world of the 2030s. Türkiye, as it develops its own technological capabilities and space ecosystem, should follow this transformation carefully—not merely as an observer of a new space race, but as a country that must decide what role it intends to play in the emerging space order.
The end of the ISS, however, does not mean the end of permanent human activity in low-Earth orbit (LEO). Rather, it is likely to mark a transition from the era of one dominant multinational space station toward a more fragmented ecosystem of national, multinational and commercial orbital platforms. This transformation is relevant not only for the traditional space powers but also for emerging space actors such as India and Türkiye. Türkiye has itself entered a new stage of its space programme through the establishment of the Turkish Space Agency (TUA), the National Space Programme, the İMECE Earth-observation satellite, the indigenous TÜRKSAT 6A communications satellite, the Turkish Astronaut and Science Mission and preparations for a lunar research mission. Türkiye's National Space Programme specifically identifies indigenous technological capability, reduced external dependence, access to space and development of the national space ecosystem among its strategic objectives. (Turkish Space Agency)
NASA itself is preparing for this change by supporting several privately operated commercial stations. China already operates its Tiangong space station independently. Europe is exploring commercial arrangements for maintaining access to LEO after the ISS. Other countries are considering their own capabilities. Among these emerging actors, perhaps the most strategically significant development is taking place in India.
India Moves from Space Missions to Space Infrastructure
India's space programme has historically been associated with cost-efficient satellite launches, telecommunications, Earth observation and increasingly ambitious planetary missions. Chandrayaan-3's successful lunar landing significantly enhanced India's international standing as a space power. Yet the next stage of India's programme represents something qualitatively different: India is seeking not simply to conduct missions in space, but to create permanent national infrastructure in orbit.
At the centre of this transformation is the Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS), India's planned indigenous modular space station.
The Indian government stated in July 2026 that BAS will consist of five modules, with the completed station targeted for establishment by 2035. More importantly, the project has now progressed beyond a broad political declaration. According to a written reply to India's Parliament, ISRO has completed the Baseline Design Review and System Engineering for the first module, BAS-01. Thirty-one baseline design documents have been released, an expert committee has completed its review, and design work on the station's subsystems has commenced.
The first BAS module is scheduled for launch in 2028, following Cabinet approval of BAS-01 as part of the expanded Gaganyaan programme. Thus, the path towards the station is deliberately incremental rather than based upon a single spectacular launch.
This is strategically important. India is constructing an integrated human-spaceflight architecture in which Gaganyaan, docking technology, launch vehicles, crew recovery, life-support systems, orbital research and BAS reinforce one another.
Gaganyaan as the Technological Foundation
The Bharatiya Antariksh Station cannot be understood separately from Gaganyaan, India's programme to develop an independent human-spaceflight capability.
India's Department of Space identifies technologies developed through Gaganyaan—including the Human Rated Launch Vehicle, orbital module, Crew Escape System, communications networks, ground infrastructure, flight operations and crew recovery systems—as foundations upon which BAS will subsequently be constructed. ISRO has also developed the electrical and mechanical interfaces needed for orbital docking and successfully demonstrated a concept for an in-space refuelling mechanism.
Testing continues at several levels. In July 2026, ISRO successfully tested the solid motor for its new Sub-Orbital Launch Vehicle for Experiments, or SOLVE, which is being developed to reproduce different conditions for validating Gaganyaan's parachute and crew-module deceleration systems. The eventual crew capsule relies upon a sequence of ten parachutes during descent and recovery.
Another particularly important breakthrough has been SpaDeX, ISRO's Space Docking Experiment. ISRO successfully docked its two SpaDeX spacecraft in January 2025. Docking represents an essential technology for India's future human-spaceflight architecture because a modular station requires spacecraft launched separately to rendezvous and connect in orbit. (ISRO)
Robotics research is similarly being aligned with the future station. Experiments conducted through India's PSLV Orbital Experimental Module have investigated technologies relevant to BAS, including robotic-arm operation in microgravity, autonomous visual inspection, manipulation, tele-operation and digital-twin applications. ISRO explicitly describes some of these experiments as precursor technology demonstrations for BAS. (ISRO)
Taken together, these developments suggest that the Bharatiya Antariksh Station is becoming an umbrella programme capable of organising India's previously separate capabilities into a long-term national human-spaceflight strategy.
Strategic Autonomy—but not Isolation
The adjective indigenous is central to India's vision. The government has explicitly linked BAS with self-reliance in critical human-spaceflight technologies and high-technology manufacturing. Some components currently used for Gaganyaan—including flight suits, viewports and crew seats—are obtained externally, but indigenous replacements have been approved and prototype development is underway.
Yet India's concept of strategic autonomy should not automatically be interpreted as technological isolation.
India's recent trajectory combines domestic capability-building with selective international cooperation. Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla's participation in the Axiom-4 mission to the ISS provided direct human-spaceflight experience within the existing multinational orbital system. Meanwhile, India has been expanding cooperation with the United States and other international partners in space research.
This combination—national capabilities plus diversified international partnerships—could ultimately make BAS particularly interesting for middle powers that lack the resources to construct independent stations themselves.
India could eventually offer scientific experiments, astronaut missions, commercial services or research opportunities to countries across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the wider Global South. If this occurs, BAS would acquire diplomatic as well as technological significance.
India's Expanding Commercial Ecosystem
A second structural change is the increasingly important role of India's private space sector.
Reuters reported in July 2026 that Skyroot Aerospace was preparing the Vikram-1 rocket for what would be the first attempt by an Indian private company to place a satellite directly into orbit. The company was founded by former ISRO engineers and is part of a broader policy opening India's historically state-dominated space economy to commercial participation. India aims to develop a space economy worth approximately $44 billion by 2033. (Reuters)
This commercialisation matters for BAS because sustainable orbital infrastructure requires more than a government space agency. Launch services, components, software, communications, materials, robotics, life-support technologies and eventually cargo services can create supply chains extending far beyond ISRO.
India is therefore following a broader global trend: space stations are becoming platforms around which space economies are organised.
There are nevertheless risks. Human-rated systems require extraordinary reliability; delays in Gaganyaan could affect BAS schedules; sustaining a five-module station will require repeated launches and long-term financing; and India's private sector must still develop considerably before matching the scale of American commercial space companies. The 2035 target should therefore be viewed as ambitious rather than automatic.
From one International Space Station to Many Space Stations
The disappearance of the ISS may consequently create a fundamentally different orbital order.
Rather than a single flagship international station, the 2030s may feature several parallel systems.
China's Tiangong Space Station already provides China with an independently operated orbital laboratory and could increasingly host experiments or astronauts involving international partners. China's human-spaceflight authorities continue regular crewed operations aboard the station.
Axiom Station is being developed through cooperation with NASA. Its architecture is designed around modules that can initially operate in association with the ISS before ultimately becoming an independent commercial station. NASA's post-ISS planning places Axiom alongside several free-flying commercial destination concepts. (NASA)
Starlab, another NASA-supported project, is designed as a commercial research and habitation platform and forms part of the American effort to maintain a continuous human presence in low-Earth orbit after the ISS. (NASA)
Blue Origin's Orbital Reef is envisioned as a multipurpose commercial station supporting research, habitation and commercial activity and is similarly part of NASA's Commercial LEO Destinations architecture. (NASA)
Vast's Haven-1 represents another model: a smaller commercial station intended to support astronauts, microgravity research and in-space manufacturing while contributing to the longer-term development of larger orbital infrastructure.
Europe, meanwhile, is preparing for continued access to LEO through commercial services after the ISS rather than necessarily constructing a completely independent European equivalent. The broader implication is that Europe may increasingly act as a customer, partner and technology provider within a commercially diversified orbital ecosystem rather than simply reproducing the institutional model of the ISS.
Conclusion: The Geopolitics of Orbital Infrastructure
The International Space Station represented the geopolitical conditions of the post-Cold War period: expensive infrastructure shared primarily among major established space powers. Its successors are likely to reflect a more multipolar global order.
The future of low-Earth orbit may consist simultaneously of Chinese national infrastructure, American-led commercial stations, European partnerships and an increasingly capable Indian programme. At the same time, emerging space actors such as Türkiye will need to determine where they position themselves within this new architecture.
In this emerging environment, India's Bharatiya Antariksh Station deserves particular attention. BAS is not simply another symbolic project in the global space race. If the first module launches as planned in 2028 and the five-module station develops towards 2035, India will have transformed itself from a highly successful launcher and scientific-space power into an operator of permanent human orbital infrastructure.
More importantly, what India is doing today provides a revealing indication of how New Delhi is preparing for the 2030s. Gaganyaan develops human-spaceflight capability; SpaDeX develops orbital rendezvous and docking; robotic experiments prepare technologies relevant to station assembly and maintenance; BAS provides the long-term orbital destination; and private companies are gradually being integrated into launch, manufacturing and commercial space activities. Rather than approaching these projects individually, India increasingly appears to be creating an interconnected national space ecosystem capable of supporting a sustained presence in low-Earth orbit.
That development would have consequences extending well beyond space science. It would strengthen Indian strategic autonomy, develop high-technology industries, create commercial opportunities, expand India's diplomatic influence and potentially provide new countries with access to human spaceflight. India's preparations therefore demonstrate how space policy can increasingly combine technology, industrial policy, strategic autonomy, international diplomacy and commercial development.
Türkiye should carefully follow precisely these developments. Türkiye is certainly not starting from zero. Its National Space Programme places indigenous technological development and reduced foreign dependence among its objectives; İMECE has demonstrated indigenous Earth-observation capabilities; TÜRKSAT 6A represents an important step in nationally developed communications-satellite technology; and Türkiye has now accumulated human-spaceflight and microgravity research experience through Alper Gezeravcı's ISS mission and Tuva Cihangir Atasever's suborbital research flight. (Turkish Space Agency)
Furthermore, Türkiye is preparing its next major step through the Lunar Research Programme. The Turkish Space Agency lists AYAP-1 among its ongoing flagship projects, while Turkish officials stated in April 2026 that the lunar mission was being targeted for 2027 and would incorporate a domestically developed hybrid propulsion system for the transfer towards the Moon. (Turkish Space Agency)
India is therefore particularly relevant for Türkiye not because the two countries possess identical space programmes or financial capacities, but because India's trajectory illustrates how an emerging power can gradually connect satellites, launch technologies, astronauts, scientific experiments, private companies and eventually orbital infrastructure into a broader national strategy. For Türkiye, closely examining BAS, Gaganyaan, India's private space ecosystem and the other post-ISS station projects could consequently provide useful lessons when determining its own priorities for the 2030s.
Türkiye will also host the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) 2026 in Antalya, an opportunity directly connected by the Turkish Space Agency to the National Space Programme's objectives of increasing space awareness and developing Türkiye's space ecosystem. This makes the present period particularly appropriate for a deeper Turkish discussion about the country's longer-term role within the rapidly changing international space economy. (Turkish Space Agency)
The end of the ISS, therefore, should perhaps be understood less as the conclusion of an era than as the beginning of another: from the International Space Station to an international system of space stations. India is already preparing systematically for that world of the 2030s. Türkiye, as it develops its own technological capabilities and space ecosystem, should follow this transformation carefully—not merely as an observer of a new space race, but as a country that must decide what role it intends to play in the emerging space order.
_jpeg_2025_22_12_b3702079-4965-4132-8c28-6f30c62c1513.jpeg "Defense, Security, and Intelligence Revolution: Technopolitics and Demopolitics")
