Digantara-built World's 1st commercial space weather sensor validated; work on next gen sensor on

BENGALURU: Four months since its launch, the world’s first commercial space weather sensor built by Bengaluru-headquartered situational awareness (SSA) and space surveillance firm Digantara has enough data to provide key assessments aside from beginning the development of the next version of the sensors.

On June 30, Digantara’s ROBI ( ROBust Integrating proton fluence metre ), the space weather sensor system, was launched onboard the last stage (PS4) of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle ’s (PSLV) by Isro.

ROBI, also the world’s smallest digital space weather sensor for monitoring space weather, is pegged as a giant leap for Digantara towards building their space infrastructure for providing a one-stop comprehensive SSA solution.

“This will enable us to include proprietary near real-time space weather information to our ground-breaking platform, Space - Mission Assurance Platform (Space - MAP),” Digantara had said. TOI was the first to report about Digantara’s proposed ‘space mapping’ technology.

Tanveer Ahmed, co-founder and chief technology officer, Digantara, told TOI on Friday that ROBI has provided the exact input to enable the firm to take up the next phase of activity, that is the next generation sensor ROBI-2.0.

“We’ve successfully validated that the sensor works in space. We now have sufficient insight to develop ROBI 2.0. Space weather is very intricate; with ROBI’s data we’ll be able to predict the particle radiation environment and characterise damage they can do to avionics, solar panels in LEO (low earth orbit) aside from damage to humans, which will be relevant for future human missions,” Ahmed said.

Elaborating on the importance, he said that as with any situational awareness, SSA also requires perception (gathering of data), comprehension (processing data to suit operational needs) and prediction.

“When we began work on our SSA technology, we found that aside from existing data being woefully inadequate, understanding space weather was also critical in order to provide accurate orbit mapping for objects in space and for overall SSA. That led us to building ROBI,” Ahmed said.

He added that ROBI was the first of several sensors the firm was developing to fully characterise the ever-changing environment of space.

With a growing population in near Earth orbit coupled with increasing space-based applications such as in-orbit refuelling, servicing, space tourism there is a need for high-fidelity SSA to ensure effective space operations.

Digantara’s patented, digital space weather sensor’s extremely small footprint (12mm X 7mm X 7mm) with power consumption of less than 20mW and the simplicity of integration, makes it ideal to place in any satellite that goes to space, irrespective of size, shape or application.

“This will enable us to increase the amount of empirical space weather data that will be available in quasi-real time,” according to the firm.

Pointing out that measuring Space weather not only aids in the protection of space-based and terrestrial systems against space weather, the firm said, adding that the near real-time data from ROBI will allow it to develop higher fidelity models with which it can assist stakeholders to make informed decisions when it comes to safety of flight services.