Knowledge Nugget | From Vikram-1 to Drishti: How India’s private space sector is taking off

Take a look at the essential events, concepts, terms, quotes, or phenomena every day and brush up your knowledge. Here’s your UPSC Current Affairs knowledge nugget for today on Vikram-1 and GalaxEye’s Drishti.

Vikram-1, India’s first private orbital rocket, is ready for its first test flight under ‘Mission Aagaman’. On July 2, Skyroot announced they will launch Vikram-1, into space within a window from July 12 to August 4 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. In this context, let’s understand what the Vikram-1 lander is and also know about GalaxEye’s Drishti satellite, which has been in the news.

1. Developed for carrying smaller satellites, Vikram 1 has an all-carbon composite structure with solid fuel boosters, and a 3D printed liquid engine. Manufactured entirely in India, it can carry up to 350kg till low Earth orbit, and up to 260 kg to the sun-synchronous orbit (SSO). An SSO is a near-polar orbit where a satellite passes over any given point on Earth’s surface at the same exact local mean solar time every day.

2. According to the description on Skyroot’s website Vikram 1 is an “on-demand launch vehicle for rapid, precise, and customisable small satellite deployments”.

3. The journey of Vikram 1’s creation has been documented on their Youtube and Instagram channels where they also mention that the rocket has “no pilot and no joystick, just the onboard intelligence that gets it to orbit.”

4. Its guidance, navigation, and control system algorithms coordinate with the flight sequence software, led by its mission computer Ramanujan, to allow the rocket to make autonomous decisions while in orbit.

What was ‘Vikram-S’ (Mission Prarambh)?

1. In November 2022, Skyroot launched India’s first private satellite – Vikram-S – from ISRO’s facilities.

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2. The ‘Vikram-S’, a small experimental rocket, marked India’s first successful privately built sub-orbital flight. Dubbed ‘Mission Prarambh’, it only circled the earth, and was not meant to deploy satellites.

Do you Know?

Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace is India’s first space startup to sign an MoU with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to launch a rocket into space.

What is GalaxEye’s Drishti satellite?

1. First-of-its-kind satellite named Drishti by Indian start-up, GalaxEye, was launched on 3 May, 2026 by Falcon 9 rocket of SpaceX from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, United States, as one of the 45 payloads on the CAS500-2 mission.

2. Imaging satellites are generally equipped to take multi-spectral or hyper-spectral (optical) images, or they use Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). Both of these kinds of satellite data are used extensively.

3. However, both of these imaging systems have their own limitations. Multi-spectral images are clear and easy to understand, but they are not effective during cloudy weather or night time. SAR signals can penetrate clouds and take continuous images, but they are not intuitive. Like X-ray images, they need experts to glean the information.

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4. SAR and optical sensors are designed in different ways. They look at the Earth at different angles (parallax). So, if they are placed side by side, for example, the optical sensor might be looking at Bengaluru while SAR is capturing Dubai at that instant. There is the issue of capture time (temporal gaps) as well which create problems in mission-critical applications.

5. To solve this issue and get clear and intuitive images from space, Indian start-up, GalaxEye, designed the Drishti satellite where both imaging sensors are put on the satellite and operate in sync with each other to produce simultaneous imaging of the same place. This eliminates the need for users to manually align datasets from two different satellites.

6. Drishti satellite combines the clarity of Optical Imaging with the all-weather reliability of SAR on a single platform to deliver intuitive, reliable, all-weather Earth imagery that is already analysis-ready. For this reason, the company is describing its innovation as Opto-SAR technology.

BEYOND THE NUGGET: What is Pathfinder?

1. Space-tech startup Pixxel on May 4, announced a partnership with LLM provider Sarvam AI to develop and build India’s first orbital data centre satellite called Pathfinder.

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2. Expected to reach orbit by the end of 2026, the 200-kg satellite will house GPUs (graphics processing units) that will be used to carry out training and inference of Sarvam’s AI model.

3. Unlike conventional satellite computing, which relies on low-power edge processors optimised for survival rather than performance, the Pathfinder satellite will house the same generation of hardware as on-ground data centres used to power frontier AI models.

Post Read Question

Consider the following statements with reference to Vikram-1:

1. It is India’s first privately developed orbital launch vehicle.

2. It has an all-carbon composite structure.

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3. It can carry up to 350kg till low Earth orbit, and up to 260 kg to the sun-synchronous orbit (SSO).

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 and 2 only

(b) 2 and 3 only

(c) 1 and 3 only

(d) 1, 2 and 3

ANSWER KEY

(d)

(Sources: India’s first private orbital rocket Vikram 1 eyes ‘Mission Aagaman’ launch by August 4, India’s aerospace industry is taking a private turn with ISRO’s help, First-of-its-kind satellite by Indian start-up flies on SpaceX rocket, Pixxel, Sarvam to launch India’s first orbital data centre satellite for AI training)

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