TDB Gives Rs 64.05 Crore for Astrome AI-ELINT Satellite Project

The Technology Development Board (TDB) of the Department of Science and Technology has signed an agreement with Astrome Technologies Private Limited, a Bengaluru firm in Karnataka, to give it Rs 64.05 crore from the Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Fund. The money will help build a sovereign, space-based constellation of satellites that gathers electronic intelligence with the help of artificial intelligence, for use in national security.

Cost and form of support

The whole project is costed at Rs 128.11 crore, of which the Board's share is Rs 64.05 crore. The support is being given as Optionally Convertible Debt (OCD), a form of lending that can later be turned into equity. The aim is to carry the critical technologies from Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 up to TRL 9, that is from a laboratory-proven idea to a system flown and proven in service.

What is being built

The programme, named AI-ELINT for Artificial Intelligence-enabled Electronic Intelligence, puts three pieces of technology together:

• An ELINT payload that can pick up and study signals across a wide band of frequencies.
• Ground software driven by artificial intelligence that processes and reads the data the satellites send down.
• An inter-satellite communication link, so that satellites in the group can pass information to one another and work as a single network.

The satellites

The plan is for microsatellites of the 50 kg class, placed in low Earth orbit and added to the group in stages. As more satellites join, coverage widens and the gap between two looks at the same place shortens, which allows steady watch over chosen areas. The project sits in the deep technology sector, with space technology as its sub-sector, and brings together satellite engineering, electronic intelligence, artificial intelligence and secure communication from orbit.

What officials said

TDB Secretary Rajesh Kumar Pathak said building such platforms demands steady innovation, strict validation and long-term money, and that the Board is backing Indian firms whose frontier work can strengthen the country's strategic technology base. Astrome said the backing would speed up the development and integration of its indigenous payload, data processing and inter-satellite links, and help take them towards TRL 9.