Despite its global reputation for budget-friendly space missions, India spends more per kilogram of payload sent to low-Earth orbit than any other major spacefaring nation, according to a peer-reviewed study published in Economics Letters. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Politecnico di Torino (a technical university in northern Italy) estimate India's cost at $13,302 per kilogram in 2025, compared to $9,897 for Europe, $5,809 for China, and $3,225 for the United States. The study attributes the high figure to ISRO (India's national space agency) relying primarily on small rockets, which spread the fixed costs of each launch across relatively little payload — and to launch frequency being too low to generate the cost-reducing learning curve seen in the U.S. and Europe.