The world’s smallest digital space weather instrument launched into space

New Delhi: Startup Digantara launched the world’s first commercial space-based weather system ROBI (ROBust Integrating proton fluence metre) on the Indian Space Research Organisations’ PSLV – C53 Mission.

It is India’s one of the first commercial payloads that will utilise PSLV’s PS-4 orbital platform, the company said.

The space-weather instrument has an extremely small footprint with a power consumption of below 20 megawatts.

The simplicity of the instrument increases the amount of empirical space weather data that will be available in quasi-real-time.

Digantara was started by alumni of Lovely Professional University Anirudh Sharma and Rahul Rawat, under the incubation of IIS-C Bangalore. The company was backed by Kalaari Capital with a seed funding of $2.5 million (AED9m) in 2021. Using the amount, the startup aggressively strengthened its capabilities for furnishing a technology demonstration of its hardware infrastructure by sending an asset to space in less than a year.

“With a growing population in near-Earth orbit coupled with increasing space-based applications such as in-orbit refuelling, servicing, space tourism there is a need for high fidelity situational awareness to ensure effective space operations,” said Anirudh Sharma, CEO of Digantara.

“Just as terrestrial navigation services are essential for the ground logistic sector, serving as an infrastructure layer for various companies, we can leverage Space – MAPs capabilities towards providing an infrastructure layer for effective space operations,” he added.

Smallest digital weather space instrument Smallest digital weather space instrument

About PSLV

Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is the third generation launch vehicle of India. It is the first Indian launch vehicle to be equipped with liquid stages. After its first successful launch in October 1994, PSLV emerged as the reliable and versatile workhorse launch vehicle of India with 39 consecutively successful missions by June 2017. During 1994-2017 period, the vehicle has launched 48 Indian satellites and 209 satellites for customers from abroad.

Besides, the vehicle successfully launched two spacecraft – Chandrayaan-1 in 2008 and Mars Orbiter Spacecraft in 2013 – that later traveled to Moon and Mars respectively

Source: Agencies