From Paksat-1 to EO-3: A Pattern of Inflated Milestones in Pakistan's Space Programme

Pakistan has long marketed its space programme as a story of strategic ascent. In practice, it looks more like a sequence of repackaged headlines, borrowed assets, and political theatre. The central problem is not that Pakistan has done nothing in space; it is that its leaders have repeatedly dressed modest, dependent, or even improvised achievements as evidence of a mature technological base. That habit begins with Paksat-1 and runs all the way to EO-3.

Paksat-1 is the clearest example. Pakistan did not build a communications satellite from scratch; it leased and renamed a second-hand satellite that had previously been launched for Indonesia as Palapa-C1, passed through Hughes Global Services as HGS-3, and briefly operated under Turkish management as Anatolia-1. The deal was made in 2002 to secure Pakistan's geostationary position, not to demonstrate indigenous mastery. Even the satellite's utility was bound by its origin as a salvaged platform - acquired after a battery fault had made it partially inoperable and unattractive to every previous owner.

Yet the political spin around it was extravagant. General Pervez Musharraf used the Paksat-1 acquisition to claim that Pakistan's space programme was now ahead of India's. He went further, insisting it would take the Indians "another 30 months to do the job." Those claims were breathtakingly detached from reality. The satellite was leased, relocated to Pakistan's orbital slot, and had an operational life already compromised by its pre-existing power fault. This was not the emergence of a self-reliant space power; it was damage control presented as triumph.

The deeper embarrassment lies in how Pakistan reached that point. General Zia ul-Haq's decision to shelve the PakSAT project in 1984 citing a lack of funds ultimately resulted in the loss of two orbital slots in 1993 and 1994. Pakistan was eventually left with one final orbital position and a hard deadline of April 19, 2003 - with the explicit understanding that if the slot was not filled, Pakistan would lose access to any future geostationary positions. In other words, Paksat-1 was not a grand leap forward; it was a last-minute rescue operation to avoid losing orbital rights altogether.

This pattern reflects a broader institutional weakness inside SUPARCO. Unlike India's ISRO, Pakistan's space agency had been led for long stretches by retired generals rather than scientists. From 2001 to 2012, Pakistan managed only two satellites: one was the acquired Paksat-1, and the other was Paksat-1R - designed and built by the China Great Wall Industry Corporation, launched on a Long March 3B from Xichang, and funded by the Chinese government through a soft loan.

SUPARCO's trajectory had been shaped by weak political support, budgetary neglect, and a widening gap with India's far more capable space establishment.

That institutional dependence did not end with Paksat-1R. Pakistan in January 2025 launched its first domestically produced observation satellite, EO-1, from China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre aboard a Chinese Long March-2D rocket operated by China Great Wall Industry Corporation.

The launch was presented as a milestone, but the reliance on Chinese launch infrastructure underscored Pakistan's continuing dependence on external assistance for even its most celebrated space achievements. The technology may have been indigenous in parts, but the ecosystem was not.

EO-3 in April 2026 followed the same script. Pakistan and its officials hailed the launch as a "significant milestone," celebrating the satellite's advanced imaging payload, AI-assisted processing, and promised civilian and strategic uses. But once again, the launch took place from China's Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre aboard a Chinese Long March-6 rocket - launch infrastructure Pakistan does not possess. The pattern is unmistakable: the state announces strategic maturity, while the operational reality continues to rely on foreign launch capacity, foreign infrastructure, and foreign political cover.

Worse, the publicity around EO-3 was quickly clouded by credibility issues. Within days of the launch, Pakistani social media accounts began circulating an aerial image of Karachi Port described as EO-3's first-ever photograph. Analysts then found the same image had been uploaded to SUPARCO's own website months earlier in 2025 - the satellite had been in orbit for only days, but the photograph had been publicly available for months. It could not have been EO-3's first capture. Even if one treats the specific circumstances cautiously, the larger point stands: Pakistan's space communications apparatus is far too eager to celebrate imagery before it can prove integrity. In the space domain, credibility is a capability. Pakistan keeps spending it on inflated narratives.

Pakistan's space programme, then, reveals a political culture of milestone inflation. When the substance is thin, the language becomes loud. When technology is limited, the rhetoric becomes strategic. From Paksat-1 to EO-3, the country has repeatedly substituted announcement for accumulation, symbolism for depth, and claims of self-reliance for a system still dependent on others. That is not a space programme building power; it is a propaganda loop looking for a launch window.

(Ashu Maan is an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies. He is currently pursuing his PhD from Amity University, Noida, in Defence and Strategic Studies.)