India is getting ready to launch a satellite unlike any the world has seen before. Built by a private space start-up and designed to see through clouds and darkness, the mission marks a turning point for India’s space ecosystem. At the heart of this effort is Drishti, a uniquely engineered Earth observation satellite developed by Bengaluru-based GalaxEye and set to fly aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. The launch takes place from California on May 3 at 12.29 pm IST.
Speaking to NDTV ahead of the launch, Suyash Singh, CEO and Founder of GalaxEye, called the mission a technological first and explained why India needed to think differently while designing satellites.
“This satellite mission is called Drishti. Drishti stands for seeing through anything and everything in our context,” he said. “The speciality of this particular satellite is it has a multispectral camera and a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imager on the same satellite. This is a first of its kind.”
If this was operational, India could have gotten quality images of the bomb damage assessments from Operation Sindoor rather than relying on commercial American satellites. In fact the current Israel, USA and Iran conflict has amply shown why countries need eyes in the skies from sovereign countries as USA has barred space giant Vantor, earlier called Maxar, from sharing images from the conflict.
The idea for Drishti was born out of India’s geography and climate. Unlike temperate regions in the West, much of India lies in the tropics, near the Tropic of Cancer. Cloud cover is frequent and persistent, often rendering conventional optical satellites ineffective.
“We have found that India is a country which is tropical in nature. We have more clouds than the West,” Singh explained. “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 for some time and then it will go away.”
A striking statistic drove GalaxEye to rethink satellite design. Citing a NASA study, Singh said, “At any given point in time, above the landmass, the 70 per cent of the earth is always covered by clouds. In the seas, it is 90 per cent. So seven out of ten imageries are going to be cloudy and especially on the tropical side.”
For users of satellite data, clouds are not just an inconvenience, they are a blindfold. Application layer users need reliable imagery, whether it is for disaster management, agriculture, infra-structure monitoring or security surveillance.
“Hence, we came up with this concept where we said is there a way to see through the clouds and still make sense out of it,” Singh said.
The answer was to combine two traditionally separate sensing technologies on a single satellite. Optical imaging offers clarity and colour, while synthetic aperture radar can image the ground regardless of cloud cover or lighting conditions.
Unlike many experimental missions, this satellite is neither tiny nor lightweight. GalaxEye’s spacecraft falls into a weight class that has usually been dominated in India by government missions. The weight class is around 190 kilograms, Singh said.
The launch itself marks another milestone. For its maiden mission, GalaxEye has chosen SpaceX.
India, too, is becoming familiar with Falcon 9. From Indian astronauts, like Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, to communication and Earth observation satellites, more Indian payloads are now entering orbit on the American workhorse rocket. GalaxEyes Drishti will join that growing queue.
Drishti is not a standalone experiment. It is the first member of an ambitious constellation. “We’re going to have a constellation. The success of the first satellite will actually have a follow on nine constellations,” Singh said. “Apart from being India’s heaviest satellite, I would say it is also one of India’s highest resolution satellites.”
Resolution is where Drishti aims to compete with the best in the world. The first satellite in the series will deliver imagery at around 1.5 metre resolution, significantly sharper than the five metre class that dominates many Indian SAR platforms.
“The first one we are going to do at 1.5 metres as the resolution as opposed to a regular five metre. Then the follow on constellation will go even down. We are going to try out 0.5 metres to 0.3 metres as well,” Singh said.
Crucially, both sensing systems are matched. “The speciality of the satellite is both have the same resolution. One point five metre multispectral imagery and one point five metre SAR,” he said.
Drishti satellite is set to fly aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
In an era where technological sovereignty matters, GalaxEye has also built and protected its innovation from the ground up.
“It is our own patent and it is also a global patent,” Mr Singh said when asked about intellectual property. He added, “This can become the gold standard for the world. This is something that we are doing completely in India, never tried in the world. We are happy to set up sovereign constellations for other countries as well.”
The roots of this private space milestone trace back to academia. GalaxEye was incubated at IIT Madras, an institution that has quietly become the cradle of multiple deep tech space start ups. From rockets to satellites, IIT Madras is proving that classrooms and campus labs can now feed directly into orbit.
This transformation has not gone unnoticed by India’s space leadership. Offering a broader perspective on what this launch represents, Dr S Somanath, former chairman of ISRO, said, “India’s space start up sector is maturing with innovation, with GalaxEye ready to launch a unique day-and-night viewing radar and optical imaging satellite – a unique combination using the SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher. ISRO’s support in bolstering Indian space start-ups is now showing results. India’s talented youth are showing their prowess.”
Drishti’s implications go beyond technology and business. A satellite that can see day and night and through cloud cover delivers uninterrupted vision of the Earth. That has direct consequences for strategic awareness.
As India prepares for the launch from California, this Falcon 9 mission represents more than lift-off. It signals that Indian private space start ups have arrived on the global stage, armed not just with ambition but with original technology.