Bengaluru startup GalaxEye to launch India’s largest private commercial satellite in 2026

Bengaluru-based GalaxEye is gearing up to launch Mission Drishti, a ~160-kg Earth-observation satellite slated for Q1 2026—set to be India’s largest privately built commercial satellite to date. The company has secured a SpaceX rideshare slot, marking a significant milestone for India’s private space sector.

What makes Drishti stand out is its multi-sensor design: it fuses synthetic aperture radar (SAR) with high-resolution optical imaging on the same platform. In practice, that means crisp imagery day or night, through clouds and monsoon conditions, with analysis-ready data delivered faster to users on the ground. For governments and enterprises alike, this enables quicker decisions across disaster response, agriculture and crop health, critical infrastructure monitoring, shipping and ports, insurance assessment, and defense.

Drishti isn’t a one-off. GalaxEye says the mission kicks off a larger constellation plan targeting 8–12 satellites by 2029 to approach near real-time global coverage, aligning India with the most advanced commercial EO players worldwide. Building such capability indigenously helps reduce reliance on foreign datasets, opens new avenues for space-data exports, and strengthens resilience for national programs that depend on persistent, high-quality geospatial intelligence.

On the tech side, sensor fusion at the satellite level can reduce revisit gaps and tasking complexity—one pass can capture co-registered radar and optical views for quicker change detection, better object classification, and more reliable insights when the weather refuses to cooperate. Combined with modern ground pipelines, users can expect faster task-to-insight cycles and fewer costly field surveys.

India’s private space momentum has accelerated, from rideshare access via SpaceX to a growing cohort of startups building advanced payloads and analytics. Drishti adds a new capability tier—multi-sensor data from a single satellite—that complements existing constellations and positions Bengaluru as a serious hub for next-gen EO. With the launch window set for early 2026 and integration underway, Mission Drishti is one to watch as India’s space industry moves beyond launch services into high-value, application-ready space data.