Indian spacetech start-up GalaxEye Space offers cutting-edge Synthetic Aperture Radar tech for drones

In a first for India, spacetech start-up GalaxEye Space has offered its cutting-edge Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) designed for deployment on its under-development satellite systems for aerial drones as well. The system is capable of conducting exceptionally detailed and high-resolution all-weather imaging, even under rainy or cloudy conditions, the company said in a statement Tuesday.

This makes the Bengaluru-headquartered company the country’s only private entity to successfully develop and demonstrate the SAR technology, alongside established organisations such as the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

“We had completed the testing of the SAR sensor in December last year. And since there was a lot of interest in this area, we eventually announced it for aerial drones. This is definitely one of the milestones towards the development of our own satellites,” Suyash Singh, Co-founder & CEO told Business Today.

Several drone service providers had approached GalaxEye with a request to develop a SAR version for aerial mapping as well. The technology can be utilised across areas such as insurance, surveillance, precision agriculture, property tax estimations and monitoring utilities like gas pipelines and transmission lines. Usually, most drone companies utilise still or video cameras for this purpose.

“Instead of testing the entire sensor stack in the orbit, the cost-effective and lightweight solution for the aerial platform will also allow us to assess its efficacy here. The next step is to put a space-grade version of this sensor on our satellites,” declared Singh.

Entirely developed in-house, the fusion technology is designed to deliver unprecedented insights and data from space, empowering satellite constellations to conduct all-weather imaging without succumbing to the atmospheric hindrances that plague current single-sensor satellites. It is capable of generating highly detailed images through a compact satellite constellation that can achieve global coverage within a 12-hour time frame.

“GalaxEye has been able to prove their capabilities in such a short period of time and that too with difficult technologies like SAR,” Sudheer Kumar, Director Capacity Building Office at ISRO, noted.

The company is looking at launching its first satellite to be called Drishti Mission by mid-2024, which will be India’s first and the world’s highest-resolution multi-sensor imaging satellite. Incubated in IIT-Madras, it has inked strategic partnerships and commercial contracts with leading organisations, including the US-based space software provider Antaris, XDLINX Labs, Ananth Technologies and Dassault Systèmes.

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