BRICS Space Dimension: A New Framework for Technological Sovereignty

Space has long remained on the periphery of the narratives through which BRICS is typically described. The focus has usually been on trade, finance, foreign policy coordination, and institutional development, and in recent years this has been supplemented by aligning positions on global governance of artificial intelligence. Yet without the space dimension, the image of BRICS as an emerging centre of power appears incomplete. This is not an optional topic, but rather an area where economics, infrastructure, security, digital sovereignty, and international influence converge. According to McKinsey, the global space economy could reach $1.8 trillion by 2035, and $2.3 trillion under a more favourable scenario.

This area matters for BRICS for two reasons. First, the group already possesses a significant concentration of space expertise. Second, the group transforms space from a narrowly specialised industry promoted by individual states into a potential platform for building a broader technological framework—encompassing everything from production and launches to applied services and staff training.

A key feature of BRICS is that its space potential has been asymmetrical yet complementary from the outset. Russia and China maintain their positions as states for which space remains part of a grand strategy of sovereignty, security, and external technological influence. In recent years, India has consistently opened the sector to private players and accelerated the development of its own commercial space economy. In Brazil and South Africa, the space industry is smaller in scale compared to the leaders, but these nations clearly demonstrate the practical logic of the space agenda, actively using Earth remote sensing, data reception infrastructure, environmental and natural monitoring, and addressing development issues.

For these reasons, space in BRICS is important not as a symbolic attribute of a "club of great powers," but as an area for the practical division of roles. Russia and China provide the highest level of systemic technological base—from launch capabilities and satellite platforms to navigation solutions and research programmes. India brings a rapidly growing market, flexible institutional reforms, and a vibrant private sector. Brazil is attractive not only for its remote sensing capabilities but also for the Alcântara Space Centre, which, due to its proximity to the equator, offers obvious commercial appeal for launch services. South Africa, in turn, strengthens the African network of BRICS through the reception, archiving, and practical use of satellite data.

This heterogeneity is more of an advantage than a weakness. It opens up space for cooperation based not on duplication, but on the mutual complementarity of competencies. Within this logic, segments where cooperation can already yield practical results are particularly important, as is, in the long term, the joint promotion of solutions to foreign markets. Significantly, this trend has an institutional basis, expressed in the Agreement on the Cooperation on BRICS Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation, signed by the BRICS countries in 2021, and the intention to establish a Space Council "to facilitate further cooperation in the field of space activities and promote the balanced development of space capabilities within the group," as recorded in the final declaration of the Rio de Janeiro Summit in July 2025. These steps do not themselves create a unified system, but they are important as an example of the group's ability to move beyond political declarations toward substantive interaction in the realm of technology.

If we try to map this potential, we will find that the BRICS space agenda is built around several core regions with varying functional loads. The Eurasian region sets the primary technological scale. It is home to a heavy industrial base, launch facilities, major satellite programmes, and the most ambitious research projects. Even within this core, development models differ: while Russia and China rely on a combination of state control, strategic autonomy, and external technological presence, India is more actively combining its state programme with an expanding commercial segment and a new role for private companies.

The group no longer includes only states with their own space ambitions, but also countries with a particular need for satellite communications, navigation, natural resource monitoring, digital connectivity, and staff training. This adds an additional dimension to the space agenda. It is beginning to serve as a potential model for a wider range of states in the Global South. In other words, BRICS has the opportunity to export not just individual technologies, but ready-made applied solutions. This represents one of the most interesting prospects. Competition in space today is unfolding not only between national programmes, but also between different models of access to infrastructure, data, and services. Many countries in the Global South are seeking not the prestigious "entry into space" per se, but a clear set of practical opportunities. If BRICS can institutionalise this offer, space could become one of the most visible external products of the group.

However, the degree of integration already achieved should not be overestimated. BRICS still unites countries with varying levels of technological development, industrial standards, and uneven depth of involvement in space activities. Additional constraints are created by sanctions, the dependence of some segments on external supply chains, internal competition, and the lack of unified coordination comparable to the national space programmes of leading powers. Therefore, in the foreseeable future, the focus is not on the formation of a coherent BRICS "space bloc", but on the gradual assembly of a network of compatible projects where interests, competencies, and market demand align. Yet the final outcome is not predetermined. For BRICS, space remains not an up-and-running system, but an emerging area that can be used to judge both the maturity of the group itself and its ability to offer the world non‑Western models of technological development.