Four firms to build India’s first satellite constellation

OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS, THE CONSORTIUM WILL INVEST OVER ₹1.2K-CRORE TO LAUNCH THE EARTH OBSERVATION SATELLITES

- Snehal Fernandes

A private consortium will build India’s first indigenous commercial Earth Observation (EO) satellite network, a fillip for the domestic private space sector that is expected to slash the country’s reliance on foreign players.

On Tuesday, the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe), under the department of space, announced that Bengaluru space technology company PixxelSpace India, along with Piersight Space, Satsure Analytics India, and Dhruva Space will design, build, and operate 12 state-of-the-art EO satellites under a public-private partnership (EO-PPP) model.

Over the next five years, the consortium will invest more than ₹1,200 crore to launch the EO satellite constellation, which will fit a raft of use-cases, from monitoring the climate crisis, aiding disaster management, to planning agriculture, infrastructure, marine surveillance, national security, and urban planning.