Tata Advanced Systems partners Satellogic to develop local space tech

Aerospace and defence solutions provider Tata Advanced Systems Ltd on Wednesday said it has entered into a collaboration with Satellogic Inc for establishing and developing local space technology capabilities in India.

The partnership with Satellogic -- a leader in sub-metre resolution Earth Observation (EO) data collection, is a first step in the company's satellite strategy, Tata Advanced Systems Ltd (TASL) said in a statement.

For Satellogic it is a significant milestone as it enters the fast-growing Indian defence and commercial market, it added.

TASL and Satellogic will collaborate on the development of a new satellite design and work together to integrate multiple payloads on a single satellite that will generate a diverse range of data over India.

"The project will commence with comprehensive training, knowledge transfer, and local assembly of optical sub-metre resolution EO satellites, the first of which is planned to be launched as TSAT-1A," the statement said.

The focus will be on manufacturing satellites and developing imagery in India for national defence and commercial applications, toward which TASL is commissioning a satellite AIT plant at its Vemagal facility in Karnataka, it added.

TASL CEO and Managing Director Sukaran Singh said Satellogic is a company with best-in-class technology and an entrepreneurial mindset.

"Additionally, TASL will also work with local SMEs for payloads and other technologies to bolster India content," Singh added.

Satellogic CEO and Founder Emiliano Kargieman said, "This collaboration will accelerate space capacity building for one of the largest nations in the world with the goal of enabling the advancement of commercial space capabilities and greater access to critical information for a range of applications such as security, sustainability, and energy.".

This contract marks Satellogic's second space systems customer, following an agreement with an international space agency, the statement said.