Space tech startup Digantara launches SCOT satellite on SpaceX’s Transporter-12 Mission
With this launch, SCOT aims to fuel space safety, optimise traffic management, and assist national security initiatives.
Space surveillance and intelligence firm launched SCOT (Space Camera for Object Tracking)—its inaugural mission dedicated to space surveillance—onboard SpaceX’s Transporter-12 mission on Wednesday.
With this launch, SCOT aims to fuel space safety, optimise traffic management, and assist national security initiatives. As one of the first global commercial Space Situational Awareness (SSA) satellites, SCOT is built to track Resident Space Objects (RSOs).
The company, in a statement, said the satellites are purpose-built to monitor smaller RSOs, deliver higher revisit rates, and provide better tracking accuracy—filling a gap left by current systems.
SCOT will be deployed in a sun-synchronous orbit, allowing it to track objects in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) with more efficiency than existing sensors, which are restricted by fields of view (FoV), weather conditions, and geographic limitations.
Unlike these traditional systems, SCOT offers RSO monitoring, which detects and tracks objects as small as 5 cm.
"Satellites serve as the backbone of the global economy, and any disruptions to their operations can trigger cascading impacts on Earth, affecting both economic stability and strategic security. With SCOT, we are taking a crucial step in achieving surveillance superiority, ensuring not only a safer and more sustainable space environment but also towards safeguarding sovereign assets in the face of an increasingly contested space domain,” said Anirudh Sharma, CEO of Digantara.
The space tech sector is gaining recognition as a vital component of national security, underscoring the growing importance of sovereign capabilities. With space operations becoming more complex—exemplified by missions like ISRO’s ongoing SpaDeX mission—understanding the space environment has become crucial.
Alongside Digantara, two other Indian space startups have provided their satellites on SpaceX’s Transporter-12 rocket that lifted off from Vandenberg, California, US.
Bengaluru-based Pixxel deployed the first three satellites of its Firefly constellation, alongside ELEVATION-1, a satellite for US-based Almagest Space Corporation, which was wholly designed and developed by Hyderabad-based XDLINX Spacelabs.
Edited by Suman Singh