ISRO Exodus Shock: Over 100 Scientists Quit, Government Freezes Resignations for Key Missions

The Department of Space has stepped in to halt a wave of resignations shaking India's premier space agency, issuing an internal memorandum on July 14 that freezes exit routes for scientists working on the country's most ambitious missions. The order, addressed to Directors of ISRO Centres and Unit Heads, instructs them not to accept voluntary retirement or resignation requests from Group 'A' scientific and technical personnel associated with Gaganyaan, Chandrayaan-4, the Bharatiya Antariksh Station and other flagship projects until those missions are realised. Even requests from officers below the senior Scientist/Engineer-SG rank must now be forwarded to the Department with the Centre Director's recommendation for a final call, reversing a 2020 policy that had decentralised such approvals.

The trigger is stark: more than 100 senior scientists have resigned from ISRO, with the U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru losing nearly 80 personnel and the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram seeing at least 20 depart. Among the high-profile exits are LVM3 Project Director Victor Joseph , the Project Director of the SpaDeX docking mission , and Aditya Rallapalli , who led simulation work validating the Chandrayaan-3 landing sequence .

Low government pay, bureaucratic hurdles, limited career growth and lucrative private-sector opportunities are driving the exodus, as India's commercial space industry expands rapidly. The problem isn't new, ISRO's former chairman S. Somanath once noted that nearly 60% of IIT graduates who attended a recruitment drive walked away after seeing the pay structure, and decades ago, then-minister Prithviraj Chavan cited the growth of the IT sector as the reason engineers were leaving.

Current ISRO chief V. Narayanan has called attrition a "normal feature of large organisations," insisting the memo aims to retain experience without derailing missions. But critics, including former ISRO officials, argue the fix is cosmetic. One official suggested the agency should investigate why people are leaving rather than simply blocking the door, while another noted the irony that the government itself is promoting the private space sector now pulling its own talent away.

Whether an administrative order can outcompete a booming private industry's paychecks remains the real question hanging over Gaganyaan's runway to launch .