'Working for operationalization,' Indian Govt says on defunct NAVIC satellite fleet

The Indian Government's Department of Space(DoS) is "actively working for operationalisation of NAVIC and associated satellite systems for providing secure navigation service," the country's Space Minister Dr Jitendra Singh said in Parliament on Wednesday (25th March). His comments come at a time when the NAVIC satellite fleet, India's own system to provide Position, Navigation & Timing services, has gone defunct. Executed by the Space agency ISRO(which operates under the Department of Space), NAVIC is a strategic Indian Government project meant to serve civilian and defence applications within India and 1,500 km beyond Indian borders.

Confirming what has already been known about NAVIC, Minister Singh stated in Parliament that only eight of the eleven NAVIC satellites are functional. Of these eight, only three satellites are broadcasting navigation signals, while five satellites are capable of broadcasting signals for one-way messaging, it was added.

Back in July 2025, this author had reported that NAVIC faced the risk of going defunct, as multiple failure-hit satellites were not being replaced in a timely manner. On 13th March 2026, space agency ISRO officially revealed that another NAVIC satellite had stopped functioning, which left only three NAVIC satellites operational for providing Position, Navigation & Timing services. NAVIC requires a bare minimum of four satellites for providing Position, Navigation & Timing.

Why NAVIC failed and what remains now...

According to data shared by ISRO, six NAVIC satellites suffered failure in all three on-board atomic clocks. Atomic clocks are highly precise and sophisticated timekeeping instruments, which are fundamental to the operation of Navigation satellites. When all atomic clocks in a satellite fail, it implies a total loss of that satellite's capability to offer Position, Navigation & Timing. According to the Indian Government, these imported atomic clocks were made by the Swiss firm SpectraTime. SpectraTime's atomic clocks that were used in Europe's Galileo satellite fleet had also suffered failures, it was added.

Even among the three satellites that are presently functional, two satellites are at the end of life: IRNSS-1B has exceeded its expected life of 10 years, while IRNSS-1I has about two years of life remaining and faces the risk of premature failure. Considering long-term utility, only the NVS-01 is truly functional. Launched in May 2023, NVS-01 has at least ten years of life ahead of it, provided it functions glitch-free. Therefore, NAVIC is effectively reduced to one satellite, NVS-01, when it needs at least four.

"The roadmap for further strengthening satellite navigation architecture includes completion of the NAVIC base layer constellation and suitable enhancement in services to meet the user requirements, and induction of indigenous technologies, including a space-grade atomic clock for technological self-reliance," Minister Singh said in Parliament. However, the Minister did not specify by when this would be accomplished.

How many satellites are needed to revive NAVIC?

If the Indian Government wishes to revive and sustain NAVIC in its basic form, it must have a total of four satellites. For this, the country's Space agency ISRO must urgently launch three satellites: NVS-03, NVS-04 and NVS-05, which can work together with the existing NVS-01. Launched in the year 2025, the NVS-02 satellite has been stuck in its initial orbit and is unable to fulfil its core purpose.

Having a fleet of four operational satellites (NVS-01, 03, 04, 05) is just the basic requirement. For higher reliability and coverage, India would have to rapidly build and launch backup satellites in the NVS-series. Eventually, a fleet of six or seven NVS-series satellites would have to be maintained to reliably operate a regional Navigation system such as NAVIC.

About American and Chinese Navigation systems

For context, the American Global Positioning System(GPS), which supports trillion-dollar civilian and military applications worldwide, requires a fleet of 24 satellites in orbit for optimum performance and round-the-clock global coverage. Considering how crucial GPS is to the global economy, the US Government maintains at least 30 GPS satellites in orbit at any given point in time. The six additional satellites are meant to ensure that the service remains reliable and robust, even when a few satellites fail or encounter unexpected glitches.

To meet its own national requirements, China operates a fleet of Beidou satellites, which serve as an alternative to America's GPS. While Beidou's global network requires a fleet of 30 satellites in orbit, around 35 satellites are believed to be in orbit. Likewise, India too must have a proportional number of satellites.

Sluggish launch pace threatens NAVIC's revival

In July 2025, the Indian Government had said in Parliament that the remaining NVS-series satellites would be launched by the end of 2026. However, this seems like an unrealistic timeline, given ISRO's pace so far. ISRO launched NVS-01 in May 2023; NVS-02 was launched in January 2025, which shows a gap of 19 months between the two launches. It has been more than a year since the NVS-02 failure, and its successor, NVS-03, has not been launched. ISRO has also faced three failures in six missions executed between January 2025 and January 2026, further slowing down the overall pace of activity.