Pixxel-led consortium to build India's first commercial earth observation satellite constellation

    New Delhi, Aug 12 (PTI) A consortium led by Bengaluru-based PixxelSpace has won the bid to build and operate India's first fully-indigenous commercial Earth Observation (EO) satellite constellation, the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) said on Tuesday.
    The PixxelSpace-led consortium, comprising Piersight Space, Satsure Analytics India and Dhruva Space, will launch a constellation of 12 EO satellites equipped with panchromatic, multispectral, hyperspectral and microwave SAR sensors over the next five years. The consortium will invest more than Rs 1,200 crore over the next five years.
    The Pixxel-led team edged out consortia led by Astra Microwave Products Limited and GalaxEye Space to win the bid to build the constellation under the Earth Observation satellite Public-Private Partnership (EO-PPP) model.
    The constellation will feature a mix of sub-metre very-high-resolution, wide-swath multispectral, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and hyperspectral satellites, enabling applications such as precision agriculture, water-quality monitoring, land-use mapping, environmental compliance, disaster assessment and infrastructure development.
    "This initiative signals the coming of age of India's private space industry in the space sector. It demonstrates the capability and confidence of Indian companies to lead large-scale, technologically-advanced and commercially-viable space missions that serve both national and global markets," Pawan Goenka, Chairman, IN-SPACe, said.
    By generating high-resolution, indigenous satellite data, the initiative will significantly reduce India's reliance on foreign sources, ensure data sovereignty and position the country among the global leaders in space-based data solutions.
    Under the PPP framework, the government will provide strategic, technical and policy support, while the PixxelSpace India-led consortium will own and operate the EO system, including satellite manufacturing, launches from Indian soil, ground infrastructure and commercialisation of data services.
    "Being the winning proposal to build India's national EO constellation is a major milestone for Pixxel and our consortium members in India's space story. We are grateful to IN-SPACe and the Government of India for trusting our consortium with this historic mission," Awais Ahmed, CEO of Pixxel, said.
    He said together with Satsure, Dhruva and PierSight, Pixxel looks forward to building world-class space-tech capabilities that serve the whole planet from Indian soil.
    "This is India's moment to lead the world in space-powered solutions," he said.
    "By combining Dhruva Space's strengths in space-grade solar power systems and Ground Station solutions with the complementary capabilities of our consortium partners, we aim to build an end-to-end, sovereign EO ecosystem," Sanjay Nekkanti, co-founder and CEO of Dhruva Space, said.
    "SatSure, with its subsidiary KaleidEO, will be contributing by commercialising its novel optical and multi-spectral payload that provides high coverage at sub-metre spatial resolution," Prateep Basu, Co-founder and CEO, SatSure, said.
    "Our modular, software-defined radar electronics and deployable-antenna heritage let us iterate quickly and align to IN-SPACe's phased milestones," said Vinit Bansal, Co-founder and CTO, PierSight.
    Rajeev Jyoti, Director, Technical Directorate, IN-SPACe, said all three shortlisted bidders submitted excellent technical and business plans, underscoring the growing maturity of India's private space capabilities.
    "This project is about building India's own independent and future-ready geospatial infrastructure. It will lead to Atmanirbharta (self-reliance) in high-resolution optical and radar data for India, catalyse innovation, create thousands of high-skill jobs and contribute directly to our goal of growing India's space economy from USD 8.4 billion in 2022 to USD 44 billion by 2033," Jyoti said.
    The EO constellation will be deployed in a phased manner over the next four years to ensure continuous service upgrades and expanded coverage.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)