How Aule Space is building a ‘jetpack’ to extend the lives of satellites

Picture yourself driving a car. You reach your destination and get ready for the return journey, only to realise that you’ve run out of fuel. “You wouldn’t abandon your car, would you?” asks Jay Panchal.

When the answer is an obvious no, 25-year-old Panchal proceeds to ask the next question–why would one do that for satellites then?

“There are privately-owned geostationary satellites worth over $100 billion currently in orbit. Many generate enormous revenues but are retired simply because they run out of fuel,” he explains.  

“By extending their operational life, satellite operators avoid launching an entirely new satellite, which can cost hundreds of millions of dollars,” adds Panchal.

That is the problem that Panchal and his team are now trying to solve. Panchal is the co-founder and CEO of Bengaluru-based deep-tech startup Aule Space, which is barely a year old.

Aule is building what it calls a “jetpack satellite”, a spacecraft that docks with a satellite that has run out of fuel, stays attached, and provides propulsion using its own fuel, allowing it to continue operating for several more years. 

Early this year, the company raised $2 million in a pre-seed funding round led by pi Ventures. Aule Space has been part of the Entrepreneurs First Accelerator Programme and is also backed by the Transpose Platform.

In just about eighteen months, Aule has validated its technology at ISRO’s facilities and reached Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6, according to Panchal. This is a widely used scale, which was originally developed by NASA. TRL 9 indicates that the technology is ready for commercial deployment.

“Once we successfully demonstrate docking in orbit next year, we’ll reach TRL 9,” he says, adding that’s when the company will start to sign commercial contracts. Manish Singhal, the founding partner of pi Ventures, says that Aule will be one of very few companies globally to achieve this post their successful launch. They will also be able to do this at a much lower price point,” says Singhal, adding, “We believe the company will be able to enter into commercial contracts in the next two to three years.”

The only other company that has managed to do docking in the past is an American aerospace and defence technology firm, Northrop Grumman, which demonstrated a similar satellite life-extension mission in 2020. 

“But our mission will be much cheaper, costing somewhere around $20 million to $30 million,” adds Panchal. “There was a mission where astronauts physically went to a satellite, captured it, brought it back to Earth and relaunched it. One of our advisors actually worked on refurbishing that satellite. However, the mission cost around a billion dollars, so it never became commercially viable. NASA also attempted autonomous robotic servicing missions, but those missions cost hundreds of millions of dollars. What we're trying to do is achieve similar capabilities at roughly twenty times lower cost,” says Panchal. 

The only other Indian company that is working along the same lines is OrbitAID Aerospace. However, it focuses on in-orbit refuelling and not docking.

Aule’s technology targets high-value communication satellites. “We’re specifically targeting privately-owned geostationary communication satellites. There are roughly 320 such satellites in orbit today, and around 20-25 run out of fuel every year,” says Panchal. 

The on-orbit satellite servicing market is expected to reach about $5.5 billion by 2030, growing at around 10–11% CAGR, according to a report by The Business Research Company. This includes life extension, refuelling, repair, relocation and inspection services.

Aule’s goal is to extend the life of a satellite by approximately five years. Panchal runs Aule with Nithyaa Giri, CTO, and Hrishit Tambi, COO, and a team of approximately 23 people.

“Our team includes people from Pixxel, Skyroot, ISRO, and other organisations. We also have advisors from ISRO who have worked on India’s docking missions, communication satellites and other major programmes,” says Panchal.

Extending a satellite’s lifespan

Docking is something that India achieved with ISRO’s SpaDex mission in 2024. But Panchal says that Aule’s mission is different from that.

“Those missions involved cooperative satellites that were specifically designed to dock. But we're attempting something much harder, which is docking with satellites that have no docking interfaces,” explains Panchal.

Panchal then explains how they will do that. “Our goal is to build the world's lightest and most efficient satellite capable of performing these operations. Instead of relying on expensive LiDARs or radars, we’re developing vision-based systems that use cameras to understand the satellite’s position and orientation,” he says.

“We have built several testing environments. One is a dark room equipped with a sun simulator. Inside it, we recreate how a satellite would appear in space and capture images using our cameras. Those images are then used to train our computer vision models. We also have an air-bearing test platform that creates a frictionless environment. Although we cannot recreate microgravity on Earth, this allows us to simulate force-free movement and test our docking systems,” he adds.

One servicing satellite can dock with one satellite at a time. However, it is not limited to a single customer for its entire life. “For example, it could dock with one satellite, extend its life by two years, detach and then move on to another satellite. So, the operational life of the servicing spacecraft can be distributed across multiple customer satellites,” says Panchal. Once the mission is done, the satellites will be moved to graveyard orbit above the operational geostationary orbit. 

One might wonder why Aule Space isn’t refuelling a satellite instead of docking. Panchal says that even if refuelling technology becomes available, existing satellites weren't designed to be refuelled.

“Instead of transferring fuel, our spacecraft attaches to the satellite and acts like a tow truck, providing propulsion for up to six years,” he says.

Pixxel to debris

Panchal began his career at Pixxel, where he worked on the mechanical systems for six hyperspectral satellites that were launched last year. He says his interest in space began in college as part of a student satellite team.

When he started up, Panchal says that the initial goal was to concentrate on space debris removal. “But after discussions with customers and space agencies, we realised that servicing valuable satellites is the more immediate commercial opportunity. Eventually, the same technology can also support debris removal,” he says.

The company eventually plans to get into extraterrestrial robotics and then asteroid mining by 2050. “Our ambition is to build a robotic workforce for space. Satellite servicing is the first application. As launch costs fall, space manufacturing, in-space assembly, asteroid mining and lunar infrastructure will become increasingly viable,” says Panchal.