Bengaluru/New Delhi — GalaxEye, the Bengaluru startup behind Mission Drishti, says its newly launched OptoSAR satellite is functioning normally and proceeding through planned commissioning. Launched on May 3 aboard a SpaceX Falcon-9, the 190 kg Drishti combines electro-optical (EO) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors on a single platform — a first for India — enabling all-weather, day-and-night imaging.
CEO and co-founder Suyash Singh described the spacecraft as “alive and kicking” and said the team is still in the early commissioning phase with operations progressing as intended. His comments addressed public speculation from open-source trackers that the satellite might be tumbling; GalaxEye says those early motion signatures reflect planned commissioning procedures rather than an anomaly.
Drishti’s distinguishing feature is its hybrid “OptoSAR” architecture, which fuses optical and radar data to provide consistent imagery regardless of cloud cover or lighting. SAR’s radar imaging penetrates clouds and darkness, while optical sensors provide familiar visual context. GalaxEye synchronised the two sensors using Off-Nadir Angle (ONA) imaging, aligning both to the same roughly 20-degree look angle so they capture the same scene simultaneously — a departure from conventional textbook setups where cameras point nadir and radar views at an angle.
The company validated the approach through extensive R&D, including more than 200 drone test flights in challenging motion environments to develop mathematical corrections and digital signal processing that mitigate motion-induced errors. That development work underpins the startup’s claim of superior consistency: with about 70% of the planet typically cloud-covered, the hybrid system aims to deliver reliable data “rain or shine, day or night.”
GalaxEye positions Drishti’s capabilities for commercial use across agriculture, mining, maritime monitoring, and disaster response, as well as strategic and defense applications. By fusing SAR with optical imagery, it says it can make complex multi-source data easier for customers to use and interpret.
Looking ahead, GalaxEye plans to scale to a constellation of roughly 10 satellites within the next three and a half years. That expansion is intended to reduce revisit times for any given location from about seven days today to daily coverage, improving timeliness for monitoring and analytics.
GalaxEye has secured collaborations with several Indian space agencies and programmes. It has agreements with ISRO, a reseller deal with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) to market GalaxEye’s OptoSAR data globally, and regulatory and testing support from IN-SPACe that opened access to ISRO’s high-end facilities. The firm also received funding and technical input from iDEX (Innovations for Defence Excellence) to refine its sensor stack for defense use cases.
Singh described the government partnerships as pivotal, helping a capital-constrained startup access testing infrastructure and global sales channels. With the satellite commissioning under way and commercial arrangements in place, GalaxEye aims to grow into a leading India-based Earth observation company offering consistent, all-weather imagery worldwide.
