Digantara Aerospace: Tracking Space Junk to Safeguard India’s Skies

Vansh Arora
5 days ago
2 min read

Every year, the number of satellites and spacecraft in Earth’s orbit increases rapidly. While that’s a good sign for technological advancement, it also creates a silent but serious problem: space debris.

And that’s exactly the challenge that Digantara Aerospace, a startup founded by three young Indian visionaries, has taken up—to protect space for future generations.

Launched by Anirudh Sharma, Rahul Rawat, and Tanveer Ahmed, Digantara has quickly become a trailblazer in space situational awareness, safeguarding our satellites and missions from dangerous collisions.

Read how three young Indians turned their dream of space safety into a global mission.

Dignatara: India's Space Traffic Controller — **Team at Digantara**

Solving India’s Space Debris Problem

Back in 2018, the trio noticed a growing concern among global space researchers: orbital pollution. Satellites were being launched at an unprecedented rate, but there were no real-time systems to monitor or prevent collisions.

What if an Indian satellite collided with space junk from a 1980s rocket? What if millions of rupees of taxpayer money were lost due to poor tracking? These questions kept them up at night.

They realized India urgently needed an Indian solution for an Indian problem—and thus, Digantara Aerospace was born.

Understanding the Complexity of Space Monitoring

The trio spent over a year researching how space agencies around the world were handling satellite tracking. They spoke to retired ISRO scientists, followed global case studies, and pored over scientific journals. They discovered that the existing systems were either outdated, incomplete, or not accessible to most countries—especially developing ones like India.

They knew the answer wasn’t just building a satellite—it was about building a system. One that was real-time, reliable, scalable, and affordable.

From Idea to Orbit: Building India's Space Traffic Controller Digantara

Once the idea was clear, they set up base in Bengaluru and began work on their tech. Their plan? Build a full-fledged Space Surveillance system with real-time object tracking. To support this dream, they:

Created a 25,000 sq. ft facility to build and monitor satellites
Partnered with global leaders like the U.S. DoD and Astroscale Japan
Launched their first satellite via SpaceX’s Transporter-12 mission
Built tech to track objects as small as 5 cm in space
Raised $12 million in funding to power their vision further

And that’s not all—40 new satellites are already in the pipeline for launch in the coming years.

Space Is the Future, and India Is Ready

Digantara is not just a company—it’s a movement. A movement that shows how India’s youth can lead global revolutions, even in the most complex and high-stakes domains like outer space. Their story reminds us that with the right mix of ambition, strategy, and collaboration, even the sky is not the limit.