Eye in the sky: India to set up satellites to spy on satellites

The final project will be monitored by a team of technical experts, likely to be outsourced to a private space startup specializing in this field. The contract, worth ₹150 crore per year, will also involve India’s very own network of spy satellites that are expected to be built and sent up by end-2026, they said.

The ‘satellite mapping’ project will hinge on a network of satellites that will communicate with each other to relay data to stations on the ground. The network will be assembled entirely in India, and deployed entirely by end-2026, each of the three people cited above affirmed to Mint.

“This is one part of India’s efforts to use its space prowess to bolster national security. The project in question will help preemptively detect space surveillance efforts against India, and will ramp up the capabilities that Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro’s) Network for Space Object Tracking and Analysis (Netra) initiative can already achieve,” said one of the people cited above. 

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To be sure, Isro’s Netra, announced five years ago, is largely centred around monitoring space debris and satellite positions—in a bid to help India plan indigenous space excursions. The new project, which the defence ministry is currently helming as per all the three people that Mint spoke with, will dedicatedly track surveillance efforts in space.

“This will be a small peg in a large, extensive system. It’s important to note that India already had some satellite and ground telescope-based surveillance monitoring systems, through Isro. The new project will be a big boost to Digantara (a startup), and is definitely a good thing since it will bolster the use of space services in India’s national security capabilities. But, how effective it will be, and to what extent it will differentiate India’s ability, will remain to be seen only after the project becomes active,” said Chaitanya Giri, space fellow at global think-tank and consultant, Observer Research Foundation.

On 12 May, Mint reported that the ministry of defence and Department of Science and Technology had asked three private space entities to speed-up deployment of the Space-Based Surveillance (SBS)-3 project, which seeks to deploy a constellation of surveillance satellites in orbit. 

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As part of this satellite mapping project, a control team is expected to work out of Bengaluru, and may even collaborate with Isro to synchronize their services, the second person cited above said. The person added that Bengaluru-based, Peak XV-backed startup Digantara has been awarded the contract.

Queries mailed to the defence ministry and the startup did not elicit a response by press time.

“This is one of the biggest private space contracts that the Indian government has offered to a private space startup in India. The move reflects growing confidence in India’s private space capabilities, and will eventually bolster confidence in domestic startups gaining contracts from around the world,” the third person said.

Digantara, in February this year, set-up an independent entity in Denver, US, to cater to space and defence contracts from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) and the US Department of Defense (DoD). 

The startup followed in the footsteps of fellow Bengaluru-origin satellite imagery startup, Pixxel, which set-up a US entity in Los Angeles. In September last year, it won a contract from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) for a satellite-based data acquisition project.

Earlier, government officials had said that India’s space promotions body, Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (In-Space), was working to raise awareness within ministries to facilitate their usage of India’s space startups.

“There is a considerable amount of awareness work being done at ministries. The government can and will be a key customer for space services, and in the near term, the effects of these contracts and tenders will be seen,” said Pawan Kumar Goenka, chairman of In-Space.

Goenka had commented in light of S. Somanath, former chairman of Isro, stating last year that the Centre was yet to emerge as a big customer of space services in order to successfully emulate the US model of operation.

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