TDB Gives GalaxEye Rs 63.84 Crore for OptoSAR Satellite

The Technology Development Board (TDB) of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) has signed an agreement with GalaxEye Space Solutions Private Limited of Bengaluru, the Ministry of Science and Technology said on 24 September 2026. The company will receive Rs 63.84 crore from the Research Development and Innovation (RDI) Fund towards a project whose approved cost is Rs 247.69 crore, and the money is to be routed through optionally convertible debentures rather than as a grant.

What OptoSAR does

The project is to build a multisensor satellite carrying the company's OptoSAR payload, which puts two unlike ways of looking at the earth on the same platform.

Each sensor fails where the other is strong, so fusing their data yields a fuller and less interrupted picture than either can give alone. The satellite is designed for imaging finer than half a metre, which is the resolution band at which individual objects on the ground can be separated.

Where such a satellite is used

The intended uses named in the announcement are surveillance over wide areas and at long range, detection of people and vehicles, and classification of targets, in weather and light of every kind. That combination explains why the field is treated as strategic and why the government wants the capability built at home.

From TRL-6 to TRL-9

The support is described as a technology-maturation exercise. A technology at TRL-6 has been demonstrated as a working model in conditions close to the real thing; at TRL-9 it is proven in service. The gap between the two is filled by engineering, testing and validation, and that is the stretch the funding covers, taking the payload towards deployment and eventual commercial sale. Rajesh Kumar Pathak, Secretary of the TDB, said India's space ecosystem is entering a phase in which the ability to build and deploy advanced technology within the country will matter more and more, and that the RDI Fund exists to carry such efforts through the difficult stages between advanced development and deployment.