India Launches TAPAS-1 Commercial Thermal-Imaging Space Payload

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Key takeaways

Ahmedabad startup Satleo Labs launched TAPAS-1, India's first private commercial thermal-imaging payload, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The 1.5 kg payload operates in a 500-km Sun-Synchronous Low Earth Orbit with a 3-year operational lifetime.
It helps manage urban heat islands, tracks wildfires in real time, monitors agricultural moisture depletion, and maps underground geological formations.
The startup plans to expand this technology by launching 10 to 15 microsatellites in the PYRO constellation by 2029.

Ahmedabad-based spacetech startup Satleo Labs successfully launched TAPAS-1 into space.
It is India's first commercial private thermal-imaging payload.
The payload went to space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during the Transporter-18 rideshare mission in California.

The Thermal Access Platform for Analytics & Solutions (TAPAS-1) is an indigenous commercial thermal-imaging nanosatellite payload that weighs 1.5 kg and features a modular CubeSat design.
It functions as an orbital thermometer for Earth by capturing surface thermal infrared radiation variations.
It was created by Satleo Labs, an Ahmedabad startup founded in 2023 by Shravan Singh Bhati, former ISRO scientist Dr. Ranendu Ghosh, and Urmil Bakhai.
The payload reached space using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that carried 130 satellites together in the Transporter-18 mission.
It operates at an altitude of 500 km in a Sun-Synchronous Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
The payload has a 3-year operational life, which will lead to TAPAS-2 and the PYRO constellation of 10 to 15 microsatellites by 2029.
It aims to supply affordable, high-resolution thermal data to commercial, civic, and defense users without requiring dedicated ground equipment.

It measures fine surface temperature changes across city neighborhoods to help municipal authorities reduce urban heat stress.
It monitors soil moisture loss and crop water usage so farmers can adjust irrigation before crops show visible damage.
It detects underground fires, tracks forest fire boundaries through smoke, and locates industrial heat anomalies in real time.
It uses thermal differences in ground material to reveal buried archaeological ruins, underground fault lines, and mineral deposits.
It pairs thermal sensors with cloud machine learning to process raw measurements into practical sector insights.