Three Hyderabad start-ups are conquering the new frontier in space race — Low Earth Orbit

ANI - Hyderabad: In the middle of a makeshift laboratory littered with circuit boards, entangled wires, and rolls of duct tape sits an unfinished piece of machinery, waiting to be worked upon. Blue labels mark its onboard computer, electronic power system, and battery pack.

The contraption is destined for invisible horizons. It’s a satellite headed soon for Low Earth Orbit (LEO), where a new crop of Indian innovators is competing in a global race. LEO is now the most coveted piece of real estate in space.  The Hyderabad satellite belongs to TakeMe2Space, which wants to democratise access to it.

“Growing up, we had access to computers. But today if someone wants to access a satellite, they’re asked to write a scientific paper,” said Ronak Kumar Samantray, the founder of TakeMe2Space. “We are creating a platform where any idea can be deployed in orbit.”

An entire wall in Samantray’s workspace at IIIT Hyderabad is painted black, with the company’s logo — three sides of a cube — next to the words ‘space is for everyone’. His plan is to build data centres in the sky, where computing will take place in orbit rather than on the ground.

Half a dozen graduates from IIT, BITS Pilani, and other engineering colleges are propelling India into the next frontier of modern spaceflight — satellites in LEO. Hyderabad is emerging as a hub, with Skyroot building the launch vehicles (rockets) and Dhruva Space offering full-stack solutions, from the satellite platform to the ground stations. In Bengaluru, meanwhile, Pixxel is building a constellation of satellites for Earth observation.

Sitting roughly 400 to 1,000 km above the planet, LEO is the easiest orbit to reach and is naturally shielded from intense radiation, making it a sweet spot for modern satellite applications. Consumers can access satellite internet with almost no lag, institutes can collect climate data, and scientists can get high-resolution images of agricultural land.

For decades, sending anything into space was an expensive endeavour, reserved for governments with deep pockets. That changed when Elon Musk’s SpaceX began flying its Falcon series of rockets, driving down launch costs by orders of magnitude. And the success of Starlink, SpaceX’s global satellite internet constellation, established LEO as the most lucrative segment.

“Just like our smartphones are getting smaller and more efficient, so are satellites. Launches have also become more frequent and cheaper,” said Pawan Kumar Chandana, the co-founder and CEO of Skyroot Aerospace, in between meetings gearing up for the launch of Vikram 1, their first rocket aiming to reach LEO.

“And three billion people don’t have access to high-speed internet. To connect them all, space is the best — it’s global.”