Digantara Research and Technologies Pvt. Ltd., a space situational awareness company, has signed a contract with Orbital Astronautics Ltd (OrbAstro), a satellite and in-orbit service provider, to fly its SCOT (space–based space climate and object tracker) payload onboard an ORB-6 satellite platform launching towards the end of 2022. The mission will focus on demonstration of a novel LiDAR-based technology developed by Digantara, and will serve as the pilot for their LEO constellation providing a space situational awareness service.
“With the rapid growth of satellite applications and the influx of mega constellations, situational awareness of 1.0 – 10.0cm objects, in addition to objects larger than 10cm, is becoming increasingly important. With 96 percent of potentially hazardous objects still untracked, comprehensive situational awareness is required to operate assets in LEO effectively. Solving such intricate problems requires real-time insights,” said Anirudh Sharma, CEO of Digantara. “Digantara's mission is to build a sustainable near-Earth environment and access to space by providing actionable insights through meaningful collaborations with industry stakeholders. Cooperation with companies such as OrbAstro play an important role in accelerating Digantara's objectives.”
“Through its own satellite constellation, Digantara is working towards providing a service that constellation operators, space agencies, and regulators are screaming for. By far the most effective solution to a sustainable LEO environment will be comprehensive space traffic management. This will not be possible without companies like Digantara enriching datasets on traffic,” said Dr Ash Dove-Jay, CEO of OrbAstro. “Over the coming years, to enable the space traffic management aspect of our Guardian Network service, we are going to become reliant on partnerships with companies like Digantara.”
Beyond being a space-as-a-service provider geared towards nanosatellite and microsatellite constellations, OrbAstro is building an infrastructure to better service customer satellites, the Guardian Network. The Guardian Network provides low-latency access to customer satellites through an in-orbit data relay network, and it provides a high level of operations automation at the level of the satellite, mission, constellation, and space traffic management.