India, Jan. 15 -- The failure of the PSLV-C62 launch is more than about the failure of a rocket or of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro). This is the fifth Isro failure in the last seven years, but it should draw attention to wider problems disrupting the evolution of the Indian space domain as a national space power and as a combat force multiplier in the era of multi-domain operations.

Despite being the fourth-largest economy globally, a deeper examination of the Indian space ecosystem reveals that India is gradually falling behind traditional space powers, the US, China, Russia, EU and Japan, in all three areas of space - upstream, comprising satellite constellations, midstream, for fast paced space data aggregation, and do...