India and the United Arab Emirates work closely with the United States-led Artemis system, while China and Russia are developing a different lunar architecture. Yet they are building new BRICS space machinery together. That apparent contradiction may be the point.
At first glance, a BRICS Space Council should be difficult to make work. Its members are embedded in very different international space arrangements, from the US-led Artemis framework for cooperation and principles around lunar and deep-space exploration to the China–Russia International Lunar Research Station, while others retain much smaller national programmes.
Yet in September, BRICS leaders reported significant progress towards establishing a Space Council and expanding an existing satellite-data arrangement beyond the original five members—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—to accommodate newer members including Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia.
That may sound like the beginnings of a new space bloc. It probably is not.
The more interesting possibility is that the model may work precisely because it does not require those wider strategic relationships to converge. Roscosmos, Russia’s state space corporation, was unusually explicit during the New Delhi summit. Its chief, Dmitry Bakanov, said the proposed council would not become a BRICS equivalent of the European Space Agency (ESA). Its role would instead be to coordinate agreed projects, including satellite-data sharing, use of national orbital networks and selected joint missions.
That distinction is more important than it sounds.
ESA works well because its members pool substantial funding and institutional authority into common programmes. BRICS, by contrast, appears to be heading towards something much lighter, centred on coordinating selected projects rather than pooling authority at ESA’s scale.
Its members would retain national control over spacecraft, budgets and strategic partnerships while joining selected projects. That may be what makes the model workable rather than evidence of institutional weakness. BRICS has already tested the model.
In 2021, its original five members established the BRICS Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation. They did not jointly build a fleet of satellites. Instead, national agencies agreed to share Earth-observation data from spacecraft they already operated. The Joint Committee on Space Cooperation established in 2022 oversees this remote-sensing arrangement; the proposed Space Council appears intended to provide a broader forum for cooperation beyond satellite-data sharing.
The result is a low-cost form of institutional cooperation. Members retain ownership and control of their spacecraft while gaining access to information they might not otherwise possess. They do not need to adopt somebody else’s lunar strategy or choose between competing international partnerships; they simply contribute useful data where interests overlap.
The model has since moved beyond paper agreements. BRICS members have exchanged imagery for environmental monitoring and disaster response, and the mechanism now has its own procedures for coordinated observations and data sharing.
September’s New Delhi declaration therefore matters because BRICS is trying to expand something that already works.
Leaders reported progress towards amending the remote-sensing agreement so that newer BRICS space agencies can participate. At the same time, terms of reference for the broader Space Council are being drafted.
Together, those steps could turn BRICS space cooperation from a narrow data-sharing arrangement into a broader framework of modular cooperation, in which members participate selectively in projects that suit their interests without committing to a fully integrated common space programme. That could include Earth observation, scientific payloads and jointly agreed missions where member interests converge.
That flexibility suits a grouping whose capabilities, foreign policies and wider space relationships vary significantly. It also explains why portraying the proposed council simply as an alternative to Western-led institutions risks missing what is actually new.
BRICS does not need to reproduce ESA’s institutional model or the Artemis framework to become consequential. A relatively lean institution may be more attractive precisely because it asks less of its members strategically.
That institutional lightness also lowers the threshold for participation. A member does not have to commit to a common exploration roadmap, financing mechanism or geopolitical orientation before gaining practical benefits. Cooperation can begin with data, ground support or a scientific payload, then deepen where there is a clear return. That could make the council more adaptable than a tightly integrated organisation but also less predictable. Its significance will depend less on the existence of the institution than on whether members use it to create projects that would not otherwise occur. The real test, therefore, is not whether BRICS can establish a Space Council, but whether that council can turn overlapping interests into durable cooperation.
There are important limits, however. The Space Council has not yet been formally established. The New Delhi Declaration says its terms of reference are still being drafted, while amendments allowing newer BRICS space agencies to join the remote-sensing arrangement have not yet been finalised. Those are the milestones to watch in coming months.
But the institutional direction is becoming clearer: cooperation can deepen without requiring strategic convergence.
That carries an important lesson for Australia. Canberra’s closest space relationships remain with the United States and other Artemis partners, but its practical partnerships already cross institutional boundaries. Australia is supporting India’s human-spaceflight programme through tracking infrastructure in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and is investing A$18 million in joint Australian–Indian space projects. India, meanwhile, is simultaneously deepening cooperation with NASA and participating in BRICS space mechanisms.
For Canberra, the implication is not that BRICS should become a new strategic priority. It is that a partner’s participation in one space framework tells us increasingly little about what other frameworks it may also find useful.
The temptation is to view new institutions through a familiar question: which side are they on?
The BRICS Space Council suggests that may increasingly be the wrong question. For Australian policy, the more useful question is what each framework enables and where Australian interests intersect with it.
Countries can belong to overlapping space networks because those networks perform different functions. One may provide lunar standards; another Earth-observation data; and yet another could offer training, launch access or scientific cooperation.
For Australia, understanding those overlaps may become as important as strengthening its own preferred partnerships.
The emerging space order may not divide neatly into rival camps. BRICS could matter precisely because it offers something looser: enough structure to make cooperation useful but not so much that members have to surrender strategic freedom elsewhere.
Richard de Grijs is Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Macquarie University and former Executive Director of the International Space Science Institute–Beijing. He is a frequent media commentator on developments in international space programs, with a focus on the Asia–Pacific region.
This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.
Photo: “NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 Final Launch Operations Rehearsal (NHQ202302230030)” by NASA HQ PHOTO, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
