2020: A space odyssey

Akshara· Host0:00

[upbeat music] In today's episode, we'll break down two important stories. First, we'll talk about how India created a private space industry, and then we'll talk about the complications in India's digitization story. Welcome back to The Daily Brief by Zerodha, where we cut through the noise to help you understand what's actually happening in the most important stories from business and markets. I'm your host, Akshara. Today is Wednesday, 6th May. Coming to the first story. So on Sunday, a 190 kilogram satellite, Mission Drishti, separated from a SpaceX Falcon 9, fired its thrusters, and settled into orbit around 500 kilometers above the Earth. There, it began covering almost eight kilometers every second, fast enough to circle the entire planet every 1.5 hours. Mission Drishti was built in Bengaluru by Galxi, a five-year-old startup founded by IIT Madras alumni. It carries what the company calls an Opto-SAR payload. That is, it has two sensors, one that takes images and another that senses the Earth through radar, letting it see through cloud cover and at night. An onboard AI processor will analyze some of its recordings in space before the data even reaches the ground. It's the largest satellite ever built by an Indian private firm. Amidst all the politics and war and ugliness, there's a stream of headlines that feel like they've arrived from the future. So a week before Mission Drishti went up, Skyroot Aerospace flagged off its Vikram-1 rocket from Hyderabad