The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science & Technology, Earth Sciences, Atomic Energy, and Space, Jitendra Singh, on Tuesday formally launched ‘Spade’, a platform that aggregates earth observation images produced by satellites. The platform, developed by a space start-up called Suhora Technologies takes data from satellite companies and makes it available for fee-based use.
The minister launched the platform at the Indian Space Conclave, 2024, organised in New Delhi by the Indian Space Association (ISpA). The satellite companies get the revenues from the sales of the images; they pay Suhora Technologies for the service.
Suhora, which started operations in 2018, has been working with several satellite owners, such as Iceye, Umbra and Veng, using their days to serve India’s strategic and disaster management needs, Krishanu Acharya, Co-founder & CEO, told businessline, on the sidelines of the space conclave. The start-up currently works with about ten satellite owners and has been profitable from the first year.
Speaking at a panel discussion on “Observing the Earth, Serving our societies”, Dr Rajeev Jaiswal, Associate Director, EO Division at India’s space agency, ISRO, observed that India was still only buying high-resolution images from abroad; not more than 10-15 per cent of India’s needs of high-resolution images (one meter and less) was being met by Indian satellite companies, he said, calling for more investments into HR image generation. India currently has ten earth observation satellites in orbit.
businessline learns that many start-ups, such as Galaxeye Space and Pixel, are close to launching their satellites that will generate optical, thermal and radar (SAR)-based data.