It was April 25, 2015, the day a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal. I was asking my father to check my homework when the bookshelves toppled. A falling vase cut my sister’s hand. For weeks, countless Nepalis, including my family, slept on the open ground because we did not trust the walls around and the floor underneath us. The vast open sky was the only thing I considered safe. Lying there one night, I remember feeling, “You are so small.”

Survival and scarcity are the real coordinates of life in Nepal. They shape what is considered practical, urgent and acceptable to want. I understand why the argument against space starts there. But if that is where it starts, it should not be where it ends. Because space was already working above us.

In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake that killed nearly 9,000 people, satellites and mapping systems from international satellite imagery providers like Planet and Digital Globe helped responders understand damage, roads, settlements, rescue plans and risk across Nepal. Weather data, communications and navigation systems also depended on infrastructure orbiting above us.

Nepal did not send those satellites. We used them. We had no choice.

That is the version of space most people in developing and least developed countries miss. Popular culture shows space as just rockets, astronauts and science fiction. However, it also includes weather forecasting, disaster response, telecommunications, agriculture, land use, border monitoring, aviation, banking, television, GPS, internet connectivity and climate data.

When a country depends almost entirely on external systems to monitor its own rivers, forests, mountains, borders and disasters, it is not merely a technical issue. It is a question of capacity. Who collects the data? Who processes it? Who has access first? Whose priorities shape the system? In a crisis, these questions become urgent.

So far, Nepal has already made some progress. NepaliSat-1, our first satellite, was launched in 2019. Nepal has also engaged with the International Telecommunication Union on orbital and frequency rights, and has been assigned two ‘orbital slots’ that remain part of our underrealised space capacity. This shows that Nepal’s connection to space is real. What we need now is a national decision to take it seriously.

A Nepali space programme need not copy the United States, India, China or Europe. It should not be built around prestige alone. It should be built around public value and around the needs Nepal can actually act on.

This means training students and engineers to use satellite data. It means helping municipalities use mapping to plan for disasters. It means improving access to climate and hazard data for local governments. It means bringing together universities, ministries, private companies and international partners to address practical problems. And it means building a vocabulary of space policy in Nepal, not just celebrating space when some foreign country does something impressive.

In Nepal, we often see imagination as a luxury. We tell young people to be practical. We advise them to leave if necessary. We encourage them to dream, but not here. If you want to pursue advanced science, you leave. If you want to work on the future, you leave. If you want to create something world-class, you leave. This is why symbolism matters.

A future Nepali space mission would not solve all of Nepal’s problems. It should not come before hospitals, roads, jobs or schools. But it could still matter deeply if it is attached to research, education and national capacity. The value would not only be in one person going to space. It would be in what the mission forces us to build around it: Science education, public engagement, international partnerships, research questions and a broader sense of possibility.

Last year, through Aurelia Institute, an MIT Media Lab spinout, I flew on a parabolic research flight and experienced short moments of weightlessness. I wore a rhododendron-inspired costume—Nepal’s national flower. When I later talked with Nepali students, their questions went beyond the technical aspects. They wanted to know if someone from here could truly fit into such an ambitious environment. Their questions came from a strong desire to know whether they could also belong in these spaces.

A country cannot be built solely by responding to the immediate crisis in front of it. Of course, scarcity should make us careful. It should make us accountable. It should make us ask hard questions about cost, purpose and public benefit. But scarcity should shape Nepal’s ambitions, not permanently shrink them.

In 2015, we lay on the ground outside, praying the aftershocks would not damage our homes. We survived on very little, and on infrastructure Nepal had not built, under the open sky.

Survival and scarcity are not just facts of life here; they also teach us important lessons. I learned that dependency is expensive, that the systems we don’t build are the systems we can't control, and that a country that's always in reaction to crisis never really gets to build its own future.

There is audacity in dreaming of space from a country still learning to keep its lights on. Nepal is already in space. The question is whether we remain there as passive users or, finally, dare to become something more.