TAPAS-1, India's First Private Commercial Thermal-Imaging Nanosatellite, Launches on a Falcon 9

3 October 2026National

TAPAS-1 — Thermal Access Platform for Analytics and Solutions — lifted off on 3 October 2026 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 on the Transporter-18 rideshare mission from California, becoming India's first commercially built private thermal-imaging nanosatellite. Built by Ahmedabad-based Satleo Labs, founded in 2023, the 1.5 kg CubeSat works from a 500 km Sun-synchronous orbit with a three-year design life. Onboard AI and cloud analytics turn its thermal data into products for urban heat-island mapping, crop-stress and soil-moisture monitoring, wildfire tracking and subsurface geological survey — extending India's private space push beyond the optical and hyperspectral constellations already flown by Indian startups.

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IN-SPACe, set up in 2020 and headquartered at Ahmedabad, is the single-window authoriser for private space activity in India | NewSpace India Limited, incorporated in 2019, is ISRO's commercial arm | A Sun-synchronous orbit keeps a satellite's local solar time constant at each pass, aiding Earth observation

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