This startup set up by 21-year-olds tracks dead satellites and 'space junk'

Digantara, a company incubated at Indian Insitute of Science (IISc), aims to combat the growing problem of space debris by developing India's first space-based surveillance platform

Since the start of the space age in the 1950s, thousands of rockets and satellites have been launched into the orbit. This has resulted in an increased risk of collision due to the accumulation of space junk or debris, which includes thousands of dead satellites, along with bits of debris from all the rockets orbiting our planet.

In India, Digantara, a company incubated at the Indian Insitute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru, aims to combat the growing problem of space debris by developing the country’s first space-based surveillance platform.

This would enable tracking of space objects to help satellites companies, launch firms and regulators know the accurate situation about their multi-million-dollar-valued space assets.

Digantara’s goal is to protect them from being destroyed due to in-orbit collisions through its constellation of high (one-centimetre) resolution space object tracking nanosatellites.

The threat of satellite-satellite and satellite-debris collision is an alarming problem, more complicated than satellite operation itself, for the space industry today. This complexity is increasing with the growth of the space industry.

There are more than 6,000 satellites circling the Earth, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). About 60 per cent of those are defunct—space junk—and roughly 40 per cent are operational.

Over the coming decade, it is estimated by research firm Euroconsult that 990 satellites will be launched every year. This means that by 2028, there could be 15,000 satellites in orbit.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) data suggests there are over 130 million pieces of anthropogenic space debris—waste residue, each smaller than a millimetre, due to human activities. Space junk travels at an incredible speed of over 22,300 mph, faster than a speeding bullet, causing huge damage to any objects it hits. For example, in 2006 a tiny piece collided with the International Space Station, taking a chip out of the heavily reinforced window.

“With relative velocities over 14 times the speed of a bullet (or 30 times the speed of sound), even a 1-cm object in space can annihilate an entire satellite, destroying the dependent business model and stalling company’s growth,” said Anirudh Sharma, co-founder and chief executive of Digantara.

The current tracking systems are ground-based radars and telescopes with woefully inadequate space object detection resolution of 10 cm. Hence, out of a million objects greater than 1 cm, over 0.95 million objects lesser than 10 cm are untracked.

Digantara employs patented laser ranging modules in a constellation of nanosatellites to detect space debris up to 1 cm in size.

“We detect space objects as small as 1 cm in size while ground-based systems can track space objects above 10 cm,” said Sharma. “This enables us to detect over 18 times more space objects.”

Its satellites has sensors that measure the dynamic space weather in real-time. These insights are integrated into the firm’s trajectory models elevating the prediction accuracy, which is not possible in ground-based systems.

Digantara is working towards providing a space-based surveillance platform with global real-time earth coverage. It is deploying a constellation of cost-efficient nanosatellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), for accurate tracking of both aircraft and space objects.

Its hardware-software integrated solution along with precise modelling by an artificial intelligence and machine learning-based algorithm will elevate the space-based situational awareness.

“Digantara is solving a unique problem in identifying and tracking space debris which can cause huge problems to satellites in space and also for new launches,” said CS Murali, chairman of the Entrepreneurship Cell, Society for Innovation and Development (SID), IISc. “Space being a major asset, India needs to have an indigenous solution.”

Digantara was founded by engineering students Anirudh Sharma and Rahul Rawat, in 2018 from their dormitory at Lovely Professional University,  along with Tanveer Ahmed, who was an engineering student at RV College Of Engineering. Another key member of the team is Sai Ganesh who is a lead scientist and mathematician.

The founders are between the ages of 21 and 22 and have diverse socio-educational backgrounds. At the age of 17, the three co-founders ventured into space through their respective university student satellite programmes. They met space companies to support their student team and successfully developed CubeSat structures for a space company against their request. At that point they formed the company Digantara, only to provide an invoice to them. 

However, at International Astronautical Congress 2018, Bremen, Germany they came to know about the alarming problem of space debris and the threat. After doing research on space debris tracking and they decided to start Digantara. One year later the firm was selected as one of the top 8 space start-ups of the world at International Astronautical Congress 2019, Washington DC, USA.

Digantara aims to help international space agencies to track and map the space debris and minimize the major threat to the future of space exploration. This includes expanding in markets such as Europe and America. It has already delivered its first satellite system to Ecuadorian Space Agency. The firm has also signed a memorandum of understanding with EXA - Ecuadorian Civil Space Agency to jointly develop technologies for advanced space systems and space robotics. Digantara recently signed a contract with billion-dollar European space-flight company Telespazio, which is a joint venture of Leonardo and Thales group headquartered in Rome.

Globally, Digantara competes with players such as NorthStar, ExoAnalytic and LeoLabs. The problem of space debris and in-orbit collision is so big that a team of scientists from Japan is working towards building the world’s first wood-based space satellite. The programme, conducted by Japan’s Sumitomo Forestry company and Kyoto University, aims to combat the growing problem of space debris.

Also, the European Space Agency (ESA) is planning to launch a massive claw designed to pluck large pieces of space junk out of the sky and steer them towards the Earth’s atmosphere to be burned up. Swiss start-up ClearSpace SA recently signed a service contract with the ESA worth 86.2 million euros to remove orbital debris. This mission, named ClearSpace-1, will see the first debris removed by 2025. ClearSpace-1’s mission is to develop a robot-like spacecraft with four articulated arms which will ultimately enable space debris to be removed safely.