GalyxEye’s Drishti Satellite: A New Vision for Earth

 

On May 3^rd 2026, at 12.29 pm IST, a Bangalore-based space start-up incubated by Madras IIT, GalaxEye, has successfully launched Mission Drishti, the world’s first OptoSAR satellite, into orbit. This 190 kg satellite was launched aboard a SpaceX-owned Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, USA.

You might wonder: “Launching satellites is now almost a routine matter; so, what’s remarkable about GalaxEye’s 190 Kg satellite?”  Yes, everything about it stands out as special.

According to the company’s press release, “It is the first satellite globally to integrate Electro-Optical (EO) and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors into a single operational platform, enabling all-weather, day-and-night imaging capabilities. This integrated approach addresses long-standing limitations of conventional systems and enables more reliable and consistent data acquisition across diverse environmental conditions.”

What makes this mission so special is not the weight of the satellite but the breakthrough technology that it carries, which sets it apart. The SyncFusion technology of Mission Drishti satellite synchronizes SAR and optical images through hardware-level co-location and AI-driven software processing.

The X-band SAR sensor and 7-band multispectral optical imager are mounted on a single, thermally stable optical bench within a compact payload. This physical alignment eliminates parallax errors from the outset, ensuring both sensors capture data exactly from the same vantage point during a single satellite pass.

Onboard and ground-based AI models perform sub-pixel co-registration, jitter correction, and precise temporal alignment of data points. The result is a unified dataset that fuses SAR's all-weather penetration with optical clarity into "SyncFused" imagery, providing synchronized, context-rich output without needing separate passes.

This breakthrough technology captures the Earth in unprecedented detail. “This integrated approach addresses long-standing limitations of conventional systems and enables more reliable and consistent data acquisition across diverse environmental conditions”, claims the company.   

Images offered by GalaxEye's satellite have an inbuilt advantage over traditional SAR or optical imagery alone by virtue of combining their strengths into a single, aligned dataset from one satellite pass.

Unlike Optical images, which fail in clouds, darkness, or smoke,  SyncFused technology adds SAR’s penetration for continuous imaging while overlaying optical’s visual clarity and texture for intuitive interpretation—eliminating “speckle” noise in SAR data, which complicates image interpretation, segmentation and classification.

Traditional fusion from separate satellites introduces parallax (angle differences) and temporal gaps. As against this, SyncFused's co-located sensors ensuring perfect time and perspective alignment (Precise synchronization), provides 3x more information with sub-pixel accuracy for mission-critical uses like defense operations.

Obviously, this yields better results in sectors like agriculture where crop health or soil moisture estimates are to be made, or mapping oil spills in oceans etc., by reducing analysis errors and dependency on ideal conditions. 

That aside, AI fusion in GalaxEye's  SyncFused  OptoSAR technology aligns and merges SAR and optical data using machine learning models for precise and automated processing. It is said that AI algorithms perform fine-grained alignment of pixels from the SAR and MSI sensors, correcting for tiny geometric distortions and ensuring every data point matches spatially despite differing sensor physics. 

AI in the ground and onboard detects and compensates for satellite vibrations (plus) minor timing offsets, creating seamless captures without manual intervention. The models generate intuitive ‘SyncFused’ images by overlaying SAR’s structural data onto optical visuals, and as it also reduces speckle noise, their interpretability improves.

This breakthrough technology was developed, and the Drishti mission was launched by GalaxEye Space Solutions Pvt Ltd., an Indian start-up founded by a five-member team from IIT Madras Alumni: Suyash Singh – Co-Founder & CEO, Denil Chawda – Co-Founder & CTO, Rakshit Bhatt –Vice President, Computing, Kishan Thakkar – Vice President, Product Development and Pranit Mehta –Vice President, Business Development.

 

This launch signals that India has come of age. Once successfully deployed and commissioned, initial imagery is expected to be delivered to customers in the coming weeks. GalaxEye’s founder, Suyash Singh, said that the launch has already generated significant interest from government and commercial stakeholders internationally seeking access to high-quality, high-frequency Earth observation data. According to Mehta, the current global market for earth observation satellite images is about $3.5-4 billion.  

 

GalaxEye has partnered with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), the commercial arm of ISRO, to market and sell its data globally. Through the commercial sale of its unique satellite imagery data to defence, agriculture and utilities sectors, GalaxEye can generate revenue and become self-sustaining. It is currently in its commissioning phase and is targeting to roll out analysis-ready datasets within the next six weeks.

 

GalaxEye says that it plans to build a 10-satellite network by 2030 to ensure continuous monitoring of Earth without gaps. This shall position India as a serious player in global Earth observation.

 

The Five-Man team from the portals of IIT Madras richly deserves our congratulations for revolutionising the imaging services with their Drishti mission. It’s an exciting time for Indian space-tech with GalaxEye pushing the boundaries, and we wish them grand success in their future endeavours. 

 **