New Delhi: India’s first military grade geospatial satellite manufactured in the private sector has been successfully launched and placed in orbit, with full functionality expected to be achieved within a few months.
Built by Tata Advanced Systems Ltd (TASL) at its Vemagal facility in Karnataka, the TSAT-1A was onboard the Bandwagon-1 mission launched by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in Florida.
The sub-metre resolution imaging satellite has given a signal that it is in the right orbit and tests will be run on it for the next few weeks before it is fully functional, TASL officials said.
The satellite will provide military grade imagery with high resolution of less than one metre per pixel that will be downloaded and processed at a ground centre in India that is being built by TASL.
While India has a few military spy satellites built by ISRO, this if the first such initiative in the private sector.
“This is a first step,” Sukaran Singh, chief executive officer and managing director of TASL, said.
The company plans to put up a constellation of such satellites in the future and its manufacturing facility is geared to produce up to 25 low earth orbit (LEO) satellites annually. The satellites are being manufactured in collaboration with Satellogic Inc, a leader in sub-metre resolution earth observation satellites.
