Technology

GalaxEye: India's Satellite Seeing Through Clouds & Its Impact

GalaxEye is a Bengaluru space start-up founded by IIT Madras engineers in 2021. Its first satellite, Drishti, launched on 3 May 2026 and was the first to carry…

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FOUNDED

Five IIT Madras engineers start GalaxEye

Suyash Singh, Denil Chawda, Kishan Thakkar, Pranit Mehta and Rakshit Bhatt, from the Avishkar Hyperloop team, set out to fuse radar and optical sensing.

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FIRST IMAGE

Radar on rails, then a first SAR image

A rail-mounted rig tested the Drishti sensor in January. In December came the first SAR image and a 3.5 million dollar seed round led by Speciale Invest.

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TRIALS

Army trials and a stratospheric radar

The Indian Army's Northern Command ran user trials; GalaxEye flew a SAR on a high-altitude pseudo-satellite and won an iDEX defence challenge.

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SERIES A

10 million dollars raised

Mela Ventures and Speciale Invest opened the round, Infosys committed Rs 17 crore, and MountTech Growth Fund-Kavachh led the close at 10 million dollars.

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FIRST FLIGHT

A payload on ISRO's PSLV-C60

The GLX-SQ payload rode ISRO's POEM-4 platform to test GalaxEye's onboard SyncFusion processing in orbit.

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LAUNCH

Drishti reaches orbit

A 190 kg satellite with an X-band radar and a seven-band optical imager: the first to fly both on one platform.

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SILENT

Contact lost

In the final stage of early-orbit checks an anomaly hit. GalaxEye's initial analysis blamed radiation from an extreme geomagnetic solar storm. Imaging never began.

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REBUILD

GalaxEye buys StarOps

It bought Bengaluru spacecraft maker StarOps, with satellite buses from 50 to 250 kg, and targeted two new OptoSAR satellites within 24 months.

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PATENT

A US patent and a 30-satellite plan

Its system for synchronising optical and radar sensors. Reuters reported about 21 million dollars raised and plans for about 30 satellites in five years.

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BACKING

Rs 63.84 crore from the TDB

The Technology Development Board backs a Rs 247.69 crore project for a satellite imaging finer than 0.5 metre, from TRL 6 to TRL 9.

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