Digantara, a space sector start-up, will set up India’s first commercial space situational awareness (SSA) observatory in the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand. The observatory is said to possess the capability to track objects as small as 10 cm in size orbiting the earth. Also, the SSA observatory is expected to help India track any activity in space including space debris and military satellites hovering over the region.
According to Digantara, the observatory in Uttarakhand will fill the crucial gap in SSA observations in the region as there is a lack of such facilities between Australia and southern Africa. In addition, the high-quality observations, along with those of its partner ground-based sensor network, would help improve its ability to monitor events occurring in deep space, especially in the geostationary, medium-earth, and high-earth orbits.
Besides, the company asserts that the data collected by the SSA would help reduce the potential collision between satellites and other spacecrafts by making more accurate predictions of their location, speed, and trajectory. Meanwhile, the observatory will also give India indigenous capabilities to monitor space activity over the subcontinent.
