India’s GalaxEye secures $6.5M to advance multisensor satellite tech
The technology is intended to support applications including wide-area and long-range surveillance, human and vehicle detection, and target classification, while enabling imaging across diverse weather and lighting conditions.
The Technology Development Board (TDB) of the Indian government’s Department of Science & Technology (DST) has signed an agreement with Bengaluru-based startup GalaxEye for financial support of about USD 6.5 million under the Research Development and Innovation (RDI) Fund.
The project, with a total approved cost of approximately USD 25.5 million, is aimed at developing a multisensor satellite capable of high-resolution OptoSAR imaging and taking the technology from TRL-6 to TRL-9, according to a press release.
At the heart of the GalaxEye project is OptoSAR, an approach that brings together two fundamentally different ways of observing the Earth — Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Electro-Optical (EO) imaging.
The proposed satellite is designed to provide sub-0.5 metre high-resolution imaging. The technology is intended to support applications including wide-area and long-range surveillance, human and vehicle detection, and target classification, while enabling imaging across diverse weather and lighting conditions, the press release said.
“The agreement with GalaxEye reflects TDB’s focus on enabling indigenous capabilities in emerging space technologies and supporting their journey towards commercialization,” said Rajesh Kumar Pathak, Secretary, TDB.
“The support from the Technology Development Board under the RDI Fund will enable us to accelerate the development and validation of our OptoSAR technology,” the promoters of GalaxEye Space Solutions Private Limited said. “By combining SAR and optical sensing, we are working towards an Earth-observation capability that can provide high-resolution information across a wider range of weather and lighting conditions.”
