Bengaluru-based start-up to build India’s first space situational awareness observatory in Uttarakhand

New Delhi, August 22: In a major development in the space sector, the Bengaluru-based start-up Digantara Research and technologies, will be building a Space Situational Awareness observatory in the hill state of Uttarakhand. They are building SSA observatory to track objects as small as 10 cm in size orbiting the earth.

 

 

 

The space situational awareness (SSA) observatory will assist in tracking any activity in space including that of space debris and military satellites hovering over the region.

 

At present, the United States is a dominant player in monitoring space debris. It has observatories in multiple locations with commercial companies providing additional inputs from across the world.

 

Anirudh Sharma, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Digantara said, "The observatory in Uttarakhand will fill the crucial gap in SSA observations in the region as there is a lack of such facilities between Australia and southern Africa".

 

 

 

The observatory will help to monitor events occurring in deep space, especially in the geostationary, medium-Earth, and high-Earth orbits. The high-quality observations made will be complemented by observations of its partner ground-based sensor network.

 

"With this data, it would be able to reduce the potential for collisions between satellites and other spacecraft by making more accurate predictions of their location, speed, and trajectory," Sharma said.

 

Sharma explained the strategic significance of the observatory citing the ongoing war between Russia- and Ukraine. He said, ahead of the war in Ukraine, several Russian satellites were seen hovering over the region. Thus, the observatory will give India indigenous capabilities to monitor space activity over the subcontinent providing a strategic advantage.

 

"If, for example, Chinese satellites are seen over one particular region of India for a long time, having indigenous capability to monitor such activities and not being dependent on countries like the US is a plus for India," Sharma said.

 

India has been monitoring space objects using multi-object tracking radars and the SSA observatory will be a huge boost in the sector.