India’s First Commercial Space Situational Observatory

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Digantara, a Bengaluru-headquartered space situational awareness (SSA) firm, will be setting up India’s first commercial space situational observatory. The firm has signed an agreement for the same with the government of Uttarakhand.

Details

The proposed first-of-its-kind observatory will be tracking satellites and space debris in the Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) and the Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO).
The space situational awareness (SSA) observatory will help India track any activity in space including that of space debris and military satellites hovering over the region.
Currently, the United States is a dominant player in monitoring space debris with observatories in multiple locations and commercial companies providing additional inputs from across the world. 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.

Significance

As the county’s first such observatory, it will help in the creation of an indigenous data pool that will not only be utilized for civilian purposes but also be a crucial step towards attaining self-reliance in military applications for SSA.
The high-quality observations, along with those of its partner ground-based sensor network, would help improve its ability to monitor events occurring in deep space, especially in the geostationary, medium-Earth, and high-Earth orbits.
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.
The observatory will also give India indigenous capabilities to monitor space activity over the subcontinent. 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.
India has been monitoring space objects using multi-object tracking radars and the SSA observatory will be a huge boost in the sector.

Growing risk of collisions in space

With more than 90 successful satellite launches since the beginning of 2022, there is a growing risk of collision of spacecraft in the highly congested LEO and GEO regions.
Once completed, the observatory will be able to track objects as small as 10 cm in space. High-quality observations, along with those of its partner’s ground-based sensor network, will enable Digantara to monitor events occurring in deep space, especially in the geostationary, medium and high-Earth orbits. The data will help reduce the potential for collisions between satellites and other spacecraft by making more accurate predictions about their location, speed and trajectory.
Being a part of Digantara’s planned network of resilient facilities, the observatory is expected to work in conjunction with a constellation of space-based sensors. This will improve the effectiveness of tracking and identification of pre-existing Resident Space Objects (RSOs).
Promoting the development of such critical technology and infrastructure is necessary towards building indigenous resilient capabilities to compete on a global stage.