Watching the earth: Drishti signals India's push for sovereign space power

Bengaluru-based space startup GalaxEye’s Mission Drishti demonstrates new capabilities being developed by India’s nascent aerospace sector. The 190-kg earth-observation satellite was placed in orbit 500 km above the earth by SpaceX’s Falcon9 rocket recently. India’s aerospace startups are working alongside the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), NewSpace India Ltd (NSIL), and Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) to develop technologies. Drishti is a big breakthrough in that it significantly enhances India’s observational capability. It uses proprietary technology to combine two observational systems. It puts a “synthetic aperture radar” (SAR) sensor and a seven-band multispectral electro-optical (EO) imager on a single satellite in what GalaxEye calls an “OptoSAR” combination. GalaxEye claims this is the first satellite to integrate EO and SAR, enabling all-weather, day-and-night imaging capabilities.

 

SAR typically outputs black and white radar images. The EO imagers take pictures in the human spectrum and beyond. Programmes based on Nvidia’s Jetson Orin computing platform processes much of the raw data in orbit, stitching together data streams from the two technologies to output high-quality images with up to 1.5 metres accuracy. The orbit surveys the same regions once every four days, allowing it to pick up recent changes. Optical images are often obscured by cloud cover or pollution. This is especially problematic in highly polluted tropical regions such as India, where there is cloud cover 70 per cent of the time. Radar penetrates clouds and smoke but images require interpretation. Moreover, it is difficult to point SAR and EO imagers at exactly the same region at precisely the same time. Drishti has worked out methods to ensure the two systems look at the same place.

 

GalaxEye claims it has signed distribution partnerships across over 20 countries, even before full commissioning. Multiple government departments, including the defence and agriculture ministries, and the Defence Space Agency have expressed interest. GalaxEye was founded in 2021 and has raised over $20 million from investors. The technology was developed with support from IN-SPACe, the single-window agency for space, which provided access to testing infrastructure and regulatory approval. The dual-imaging system has use cases and applications across defence, agriculture, disaster management, maritime monitoring, and infrastructure planning.

 

Drishti, thus, gives India an observational system that can compare with and perhaps supersede that provided by commercial global imagery providers such as Maxar. It is under sovereign control as well as being protected by global patents. Maxar, for example, has been instructed by the United States government to not provide images of the Iran conflict but Drishti can do that. GalaxEye intends to build a 10-12 satellite constellation and sharpen resolution further to 0.3 metres to 0.5 metres in subsequent iterations, scaling up satellite size to 500 kg. This is a significant step towards global competitiveness. This buildup of sovereign capability, albeit in the domain of private enterprise, ensures strategic independence for India, not to mention the possibility of generating significant revenue streams. It is a clear validation of the policy of opening up aerospace.