Indian startup’s satellite ‘Drishti’ to provide world’s most advanced eyes in the sky

Drishti, a unique Earth observation satellite developed by Bengaluru-based GalaxEye was launched into the space aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from California on Sunday. The Indian space start-up says Drishti is the “world’s first OptoSAR satellite” and its launch is a milestone in the advancement of Earth observation technologies.

Drishti is the Bengaluru-based space startup GalaxEye’s first commercial satellite.

“Weighing 190 kg, Mission Drishti is India’s largest privately developed Earth observation satellite. It is the first satellite globally to integrate Electro-Optical (EO) and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors into a single operational platform, enabling all-weather, day-and-night imaging capabilities,” it said.

‘Drishti can see through clouds, darkness and bad weather’

Drishti is unique since it can “see” through clouds, darkness and bad weather while also capturing conventional optical imagery, as it carries a “SyncFused OptoSAR” payload, combining electro-optical imaging and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) on a single platform.

Optical satellites provide conventional high-resolution images, but their imagery is affected by cloud cover and darkness, while radar satellites can operate day and night and penetrate clouds, smoke, and rain, but their imagery is harder to interpret.

GalaxEye has synchronised and combined both streams of data, and so Drishti can generate more consistent and usable imagery.

It will support various applications ranging from border surveillance and defence monitoring to disaster response, agriculture, infrastructure planning, and insurance assessment.

“Another key feature onboard is artificial intelligence processing powered by Nvidia’s Jetson Orin computing platform. Instead of transmitting vast quantities of raw imagery back to Earth for analysis, parts of the processing will happen directly in orbit. The idea is to reduce the time taken to convert satellite imagery into actionable information,” said GalaxEye co-founder and CEO Suyash Singh.

Satellite can deliver imagery at a resolution of 1.5 metres

The satellite can deliver imagery at a resolution of 1.5 metres and revisit locations globally every seven to ten days, he added. Resolution is where Drishti aims to compete with the best in the world. The first satellite in the series will deliver imagery at around a 1.5-metre resolution, significantly sharper than the five-metre class that dominates many Indian SAR platforms.

The spacecraft, roughly the size of a refrigerator, also carries a deployable antenna spanning about 3.5 metres.

The company had earlier tested its imaging systems through nearly 500 aerial sorties involving drones, Cessna aircraft and high-altitude platforms, besides flying an earlier payload aboard an Isro PSLV mission under the POEM platform.

The company said discussions have taken place with multiple Indian government departments, including defence and agriculture ministries, while agencies such as the Defence Space Agency, Indian Air Force, Army and Navy have been tracking the programme.

Startup plans to build a constellation of 8 to 12 satellites, with even sharper imagery

GalaxEye has also signed distribution partnerships across more than 20 countries. After Drishti’s launch, the startup plans to build a larger constellation of 8 to 12 satellites over the next four years, with future versions targeting even sharper imagery.

Vice President CP Radhakrishnan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Exernal Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, and the Indian space agency ISRO hailed the launch with congratulatory messages in their posts on X.

The specialty of Drishti is that it has both a multispectral camera and a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imager.

The ongoing Iran war has shown why countries need eyes in the skies, as the US has barred space giant Vantor, formerly called Maxar, from sharing images from the conflict.

Drishti was developed keeping in mind India’s geography and climate and where cloud cover is frequent and persistent, often rendering conventional optical satellites ineffective.

“We found that India is a country which is tropical in nature. We have more clouds than the West,” Singh said.

“The West has never thought about this concept because they never had this problem. If they have a clean sky, they will have a clean sky. If they have some cloud, they will have it for some time, and then it will go away.”

“It is our own patent, and it is also a global patent. This can become the gold standard for the world. This is something that we are doing completely in India, never tried before in the world,” Singh added.

GalaxEye was incubated at IIT Madras, an institution that has quietly become the cradle of multiple deep tech space startups.