Some 100 kilometres above Kathmandu, a boundary drawn by Hungarian-American physicist Theodore von Karman separates national airspace from outer space. For most of Nepal’s modern history, that line has also marked the outer limit of our strategic imagination. We are a country of mountains and rivers. The assumption that follows is that we are therefore not a country of aerospace ambition.

That assumption deserves a precise challenge. Nepal does not need to become a launch site. It does not need to compete with Kazakhstan, Cape Canaveral or even Shriharikota. What it needs, and what it is beginning to build, is something more durable: A research hub, a place where knowledge is created, engineers are trained, and the intellectual foundation for a knowledge-based economy takes root.

Global context and Nepal

The global space economy was valued at $613 billion in 2024 and is projected to breach $1.1 trillion by 2030. Over 40,000 satellites are expected to be launched this decade, 80 percent of them weighing under 500 kilograms. Most of the countries participating in this economy are not launch nations. They are participant nations: Countries that have built scientific capacity, engineering talent and international partnerships to extract value from the space economy without owning a launchpad. That is the model Nepal should be studying. The Garuda sounding rocket and the Munal satellite programme are proof that the research capacity exists. They are the foundation for a deliberate strategy of Orbital Diplomacy: Using aerospace knowledge to build international credibility, attract investment, and secure strategic autonomy in a domain where the rules are still being written.

Nepal’s structural economic problem is not difficult to state. In 2023, remittances accounted for 26.9 percent of GDP, placing Nepal among the most remittance-dependent economies. The World Bank’s Nepal Development Update of November makes the trap precise: Gross domestic saving stands at 6.55 percent of GDP against gross fixed capital formation of 24.07 percent. The gap is filled by remittance-financed consumption. Nepal’s IT services approaching the $1 billion export mark is a meaningful precursor to what must come next. Aerospace research and satellite services are the logical successor.

The paracetamol problem

The familiar objection goes like this: A country still working to close basic infrastructure gaps has no business spending attention on rockets. Fix the headache before you worry about anything else. It is a reasonable instinct and a poor analytical conclusion. The problem is not with the priority it assigns to hospitals or roads. Those priorities are correct. The problem is the assumption buried inside the objection: That space research and basic development compete for the same resources, in the same timeframe, through the same causal chain. They do not. Calling it a paracetamol problem implies a simple either/or choice. It is not.

Healthcare spending and research investment are not two items on the same shopping list. One addresses an immediate consumption need. The other builds the productive capacity of the economy. High-technology sectors generate spillover effects that raise productivity across the broader economy. Hybrid propulsion research produces materials science expertise applicable to manufacturing. Remote sensing moves directly into precision agriculture and flood-hazard mapping. These are not incidental benefits; they are the mechanism through which frontier research pays its way in a developing economy.

Missing framework

The single largest institutional failure is the absence of a National Space Act. Nepal has no legislative framework for launch licensing, payload liability, or orbital slot registration. Without it, foreign investment has no legal infrastructure to anchor to, and Nepal cannot formally register space objects under the 1975 UN Convention on Registration. New Zealand addressed this in 2017. Luxembourg did the same. Nepal in 2026 has not begun drafting.

The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology could start with three actions: Enact a National Space and Aeronautics Act by 2027; negotiate bilateral Science and Technology Agreements with ISRO, JAXA, and ESA within the current parliamentary term; and establish a dedicated unit within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to track global space governance at COPUOS and ITU forums. Nepal holds a COPUOS seat that is currently underused.

The orbit we choose

In March 2021, Garuda cleared the treeline in Dhanusha on thrust built from stubbornness (sugar and potassium nitrate). Fast forward to 2025, Mach24 Orbitals has successfully tested and validated its hybrid engine, which is patent-pending. Both achievements won international awards. The government said nothing, not from hostility, but from an institutional architecture that had not been designed to notice. Nepal's GDP grew 4.61 percent in FY2024-025. Remittances grew faster. The middle-income trap deepened, quietly.

The engineers are already doing the work. The talent is internationally validated. The question is no longer whether Nepal can cross the Karman Line. It is whether our policymakers and diplomats have the imagination to meet us there, or whether we will keep celebrating launches and arriving too late to every treaty that follows.