Hyperspectral Data for Earth Monitoring

Founded in 2019, Indian space startup Pixxel is building a constellation of hyperspectral imaging satellites and aims to become the pioneer of Earth monitoring. Awais Ahmed, the founder, was part of the SpaceX team in 2017 and built India's first Hyperloop Pod for the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod competition. This inspired him to work in the space sector.

With the recently launched Anand satellite with ISRO, Pixxel is the first Indian private space startup to leverage ISRO's satellite testing facility and the first to demonstrate the launch of a satellite into space.

“There is still a big gap in what we need to be seeing from space and what is actually visible from space, that was the reason for us getting into space sector,” says Awais Ahmed, CEO, Pixxel

There is a need to examine greenhouse gas emissions or methane leaks, poisonous gas leaks, and poisonous chemical leaks that are occurring in our environment and to develop efficient and scalable technology solutions.

To solve existing problems related to monitoring, Pixxel decided to build and deploy a new kind of imaging technology called spectral imaging which provides high detailing. However, one of the challenges was to build that in a cost-effective manner as no one has commercially done that before.

Anand’s Launch

With the launch of the satellite,

Pixxel has completed its demo satellites. Their plan was to prove that hyperspectral imaging satellites are possible to build in a cost-effective manner and deploy technology demonstration satellites.

Pixxel took help from retired ISRO scientists, who had worked on satellite imaging and satellites before. They were able to find the same suppliers who worked with ISRO earlier, and they used the same hardware systems that were actually previously built and deployed in space through.

“Right now we are in the process of building six more satellites, which will be much larger, with longer lifetime and more capable, in terms of the resolution. We are planning to launch them in the second half of 2023. In 2024, we will follow it up with about 18 more satellites. We are looking at a total of 24 satellite launches in the next two years,” adds Ahmed.

“Anand really taught us, how to build and test satellites that has helped us put three satellites in space now,” he adds.

Benefits of Hyperspectral Imaging

“The vision for Pixxel is to be a health pioneer for our planet. By providing hyperspectral data, we are building models and the solutions on top of this data, ensuring that agriculture can become more efficient,” adds Ahmed.

The amount of emissions, leaks for greenhouse gases and poisonous chemicals and deforestation can be better mapped and fought against. They want to do that at global scale in a variety on a different industries by creating a health pioneer for the planet.

Everything that the human eyes see is in a combination of three wavelengths, RGB, (red, green and blue) from the laptop and phone screen to all the DSLR falls in the RGB spectrum. If one or two infrared bands are added it RGB, it becomes multispectral imaging, which is one step beyond the RGB visible range. Multispectral imaging is used in night vision goggles, used by the army to see heat signatures in the night, which are otherwise not visible to normal human eyes.

With hyperspectral, the information capturing goes to hundreds of wavelengths and the entirety of the visible range, but also in the infrared range. This is why hyperspectral is more efficient and has more value than the other kinds that's emerging in space today. In Pixxel’s case, it captures 300 wavelengths.

In the case of an agricultural company that has millions of acres of farmland and the farmers want to know what's happening there. With an RGB satellite, they would be able to just look at the overall farm with their normal human eyes. With multispectral satellites, which are predominant in space today, you'll be able to go one step beyond that, thanks to infrared imagery, you will be able to see the health status of the crops, whether they are doing good, bad, or moderately fine.

With a hyperspectral image, the actual amount of methane leak can be identified and stopped from causing harm to the environment, etc. That's what really sets hyperspectral apart from today's satellite imaging technologies.

State of Space Ecosystem in India

“The number of startups today have only incorporated in the last four years. We are at a very early stages compared to decades of experience that most of the geographies have,” says Ahmed.

He further adds that the next 5- 10 years will be very exciting. Tens if not hundreds of space companies will actually come into the fore and some of them will actually start competing in the global arena, going headto-head with the space behemoths around the globe. “We are still quite a few years away from other major geographies like US or Canada or Europe,” he adds.

Challenges Faced by Space Tech Startups

The government of India has made it clear that they want to support the private space startups, which in a way is boosting the investors’ confidence to invest in them but yet there are a lot of doubts like clarity in policy, ease of foreign direct investment etc.

“We need clarity on the policy in order to figure out the parameters or bounds within which we can play around. There exist a few early stage options for raising funding for space startups in the country. There are only a few private investors in the country with a risk appetite to invest in space technologies,” says Ahmed.

Ahmed further states that the government needs to be a big funder for these technologies because in the earlier stages, no one from a private commercial standpoint will want to take risks, only the government can, in order to ensure that the ecosystem grows. Either by providing grant funding at the earlier stages in a variety of different ways or by being a buyer or procurer of this data.

He points out three challenges: creating the policy in place, ensuring ease of doing business in the country to attract foreign capital. And finally, the government being the biggest supporter, not only from evangelism or from a policy standpoint, but by actually funding it in the early stages and by becoming a customer of some of these technologies.

Space Sustainability and Orbital Awareness in India

Space regimes around the globe have found a way of actually formalizing space sustainability in a variety of different ways. For example, in the US if one wants to obtain a license to be able to launch a spacecraft one of the things that they have to demonstrate is that if satellite that's going to go up in space, can de-orbit and come down and disintegrate in space, so as to not leave any debris after the end of its operations.

Now, that same policy has been adopted by different countries around the globe and that's something that Ahmed believes will be followed here in India as well.

ISRO has a space tracking mechanism where one can track how the different spacecraft are and if there are going to be any collisions, and to be able to communicate to the satellites and ensure that the collisions can be avoided.

Ahmed says that from a spacecraft standpoint, where companies and organizations have to launch tens of satellites or maybe hundreds of satellites, ensuring that these satellites do not just end up there without doing anything, needs to be taken care of. “That's something that we have seen in the policy drafts that will come out, and hopefully it will be there in the final policy too,” he adds.

What is your vision of Geospatial Infrastructure and National Digital Twin?

To understand our vision, first let’s understand some relevant pain points our nation is witnessing:

 The cost of logistics in India is 15% of the GDP as against single digit in the developed world.

 The urban governance in India can be more efficient, faster, and better. For example, better disaster management and response to fire, flood, etc., and future infrastructure planning should be done with greater accuracy, utilities planning, and maintenance.

 The telecom infrastructure, especially the 5G network, requires nuanced geospatial information for network planning, identification, and inspection to read distress and do green coverage assessment.

 India has a complex addressing system. Lack of last-mile accuracy in addressing and