Hyderabad’s Cosmoserve opens India’s first private space debris removal facility
The facility follows a $6 million seed round that takes Cosmoserve's total funding past $9 million.
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Hyderabad startup Cosmoserve Space on Thursday, 5 November 2026, opened Base 1, which it calls India’s first private facility for space debris removal and in-orbit satellite servicing. Telangana IT and Industries Minister D Sridhar Babu inaugurated the 14,800-square-foot centre, and Union Minister Jitendra Singh joined online.
What Base 1 does for space debris removal
The facility can design, build, test and operate the hardware needed to capture dead satellites and service working ones, WION reported. It has four main parts: an orbital rendezvous and capture lab that simulates one spacecraft catching another, a space robotics lab, an ISO Class 8 clean room for assembling satellites, and a mission control centre.
Beyond clearing debris, the company plans to use it for in-orbit repairs and refuelling. Cosmoserve says Base 1 is only the sixth facility of its kind in the world.
Key numbers
- 14,800 sq ft: size of Base 1 (IANS).
- $6 million: Cosmoserve’s seed round, which takes its total funding past $9 million.
- 60%: share of mission components the company now sources in India.
- 2030: the government’s target date for a debris-free space environment.
- About 450: space startups in India now, up from a single-digit number.
Background: Mission Embrace and Hyderabad’s space cluster
In July 2026 Cosmoserve flew its first payload, Mission Embrace, on Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 rocket. The hardware was built in under four months. Its soft robotic capture petals did not open as planned, but the company says the flight returned useful data.
Singh praised the team for bringing experience from ISRO and the Gaganyaan programme into a private company. Cosmoserve works with Pixxel on satellite systems, with Dhruv Aerospace Netherlands on propulsion and with Skyroot on launches.
Sridhar Babu said Hyderabad is now home to more than 30 spacetech companies, including India’s first spacetech unicorn, and that a local supply chain covers close to 90 per cent of their component needs.
What people said
“Space debris is becoming the limiting factor for every nation’s space ambition, including India’s,” founder and CEO Chiranjeevi Phanindra said. He said Base 1 would help keep orbits usable for Gaganyaan, the planned Bharatiya Antariksh Station and future satellites.
Jitendra Singh said India was emerging as one of the early global pioneers in debris removal. He put India’s space economy at nearly $9 billion and urged domestic and foreign investors to put more money into the sector.
What happens next
Cosmoserve plans to build more critical parts in-house at Base 1, including optics, avionics and space-grade electronics that India now imports, and Business Standard reported that it is targeting commercial operations by 2028. Its work on space debris removal will be tested on future missions. More science and technology news is in our Science and Space section and on the India page.
As more Indian and foreign satellites go up, the risk of collisions with dead hardware grows, and India has no domestic capability yet to remove debris or refuel satellites in orbit. A private facility that can build and test that hardware gives ISRO, Gaganyaan and commercial operators a possible local supplier, and cuts reliance on imported optics and electronics.