Three Indian space startups — Dhruva Space, SatLeo Labs and TakeMe2Space — have launched new technology demonstrations aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 under the Transporter-18 rideshare mission, testing hosted payloads, thermal imaging and AI-powered computing in orbit.
New Delhi, Oct 2 — Three Indian private space startups have sent new technology demonstrations into orbit aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9, marking another step in the expansion of India’s commercial space ecosystem.
The Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 11:48 pm IST as part of the Transporter-18 rideshare mission, carrying around 130 payloads. The Indian missions came from Hyderabad-based Dhruva Space and TakeMe2Space, along with Ahmedabad-based SatLeo Labs.
Dhruva Space’s LEAP-2 mission is part of its Launching Expeditions for Aspiring Payloads programme, which provides hosted-payload opportunities using the company’s P-30 satellite platform. The mission also carries France-based Sodern’s HORUS star tracker for an in-orbit demonstration.
One of the payloads hosted on LEAP-2 is SatLeo Labs’ TAPAS-1, a roughly 3-kg CubeSat-category thermal payload using long-wave infrared sensing to measure land-surface temperatures from orbit.
The thermal sensing technology can detect temperature differences that conventional optical cameras may not capture and could support applications including urban heat monitoring, crop stress assessment, industrial monitoring, disaster response and environmental observation.
SatLeo plans to use TAPAS-1 as a technology demonstration before developing PYRO, a proposed constellation of 10-15 thermal-imaging satellites by 2029. The company is also developing TAPAS-2 for a planned 2027 mission.
TakeMe2Space has launched MOI-1A, which the startup describes as India’s first orbital computing satellite. It carries an Nvidia Jetson Orin NX-based computing system capable of 117 TOPS of processing, along with 2TB of onboard storage and a nine-band multispectral imager.
Instead of transmitting large amounts of raw Earth-observation data back to the ground, customers will be able to upload AI models to the satellite, process data directly in orbit and receive the resulting insights.
MOI-1A replaces the company’s earlier MOI-1 spacecraft, which was lost during the PSLV-C62 failure in January 2026. The replacement spacecraft is expected to be deployed through a D-Orbit orbital transfer vehicle, with orbital injection targeted by October 8.
Together, the missions highlight how Indian startups are expanding beyond satellite manufacturing into hosted payload infrastructure, thermal Earth observation and AI-based orbital computing.
