Shooting for the stars

Awais Ahmed is mapping the earth through hyperspectral imaging satellites to build a health monitor for the planet

The books borrowed from his high school library were what sparked Awais Ahmed’s fascination with space. Novels by Isaac Asimov and Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy were among his favourites. Then there were the encyclopaedias that his father bought for him in their village, Aldur, in Chikkamagaluru district.

Initially, Ahmed, 25, wanted to be an astronaut, then an astrophysicist. “I had these phases where I wanted to dabble in different things; robotics, cybersecurity, or AI – but I kept coming back to space. That love was always there,” says the founder and CEO of Pixxel, a space data startup building a constellation of small, hyperspectral earth imaging satellites.

The Bengaluru-based company is also designing tools that can analyse the high-spectral resolution images beamed down by these satellites and apply the learnings to multiple fields. The use cases include mapping natural resources, studying soil character and pest infestation, detecting leaks in oil and gas pipelines, quantifying pollution levels and preventing illegal mining.

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At Pixxel’s testing and design facility in Indiranagar, Ahmed points to two formative experiences he had in college that led him towards space entrepreneurship. 

At BITS Pilani, he was part of a student team that worked with scientists from the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) in designing, testing, and building satellites. During his second and third years at BITS, he worked in the Hyperloop India team for the Hyperloop Pod Competition, a SpaceX-sponsored event, where student teams and hobbyists designed, built and demonstrated prototype pods.

The team, comprising about 30 students from three BITS campuses, was one of the 20 finalists among 2,500 global applicants. There was still uncertainty about manufacturing the pod. “It was not possible to do it at Pilani. We did it in Bengaluru over three months, through sponsorships and vendors who were collaborating with HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited),” he says. 

In August 2017, the team took the pod to Los Angeles and presented it to Elon Musk and his team. “At the SpaceX facility, as I watched those rockets getting integrated, I knew I wanted to work in space tech. When I came back to India, I was ready to dive deep and learn,” Ahmed says.

The hyperspectral view

The original idea was to study existing satellite images and see how the findings could improve life on the planet. There was not enough India-specific work being done and existing satellite data was inadequate for deep, extensive analyses.

Ahmed, with a year left in college, realised that these limitations could be overcome with hyperspectral imaging, which captures light in hundreds of wavelengths or bands.

It is a significant upgrade on existing techniques like the RGB (Red Green Blue) analysis, and multispectral imaging that provides information in 10 to 20 wavelengths. 

With each pixel in the resultant image coming with a spectrum of its own, the user can study the subject in greater detail. The camera can image an area, and based on findings from the multiple wavelengths, the user can help initiate action on the ground.

A farmland, for instance, can be imaged to understand the nutrient composition of the soil and help customise farming methods. “This is one camera with diverse applications. It is like an ultrasound scanner working on different parts of the body,” Ahmed says.

The beginnings

In February 2019, Ahmed, in his final year of college, founded Pixxel along with classmate Kshitij Khandelwal. Covid forced them to defer the launch of their first demonstration satellite, planned for 2020, to June 2021. 

Credit: DH Photo

The company launched Shakuntala – its first full-fledged satellite with a high-resolution hyperspectral camera – in April 2022. 

The third satellite, Anand, was launched in November 2022. While the first demo satellite and Shakuntala were launched onboard SpaceX rockets from Cape Canaveral in the US, Anand took off from India, on Isro’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.

In June, Pixxel announced $36 million in a Series B funding round that firmed up new investors including Google, along with existing investors Radical Ventures, Lightspeed, Blume Ventures, growX, Sparta, and Athera. 

Today, Pixxel operates with around 180 staff as part of teams based in Bengaluru, Europe, and the US. It has entered a contract with the US Government’s National Reconnaissance Office to provide data on sites identified by the agency. 

The company has won a contract from Innovations for Defence Excellence, under India’s Ministry of Defence, to manufacture miniaturised, multi-payload satellites for the Indian Air Force. Time has listed its hyperspectral satellites among the best inventions of 2023.

Flies and bees to watch over

Pixxel is planning to launch enough satellites to ensure global coverage, every day. “They can paint the entire landmass, or a significant percentage of the landmass of the earth, daily. The required number of satellites in that constellation could be 24 or 30, and we will be launching them over the next three years,” Ahmed says. 

Six of these satellites, called ‘Fireflies’, are scheduled for launch during the first half of 2024. The next set, ‘Honeybees’, is being readied for 2025.

The company is directing resources into building what it sees as a health monitor for the world. “We can provide data to the people on the ground, like the Forest Department personnel. We can inform them about the onset of a tree bark disease, or a forest fire. The data can be used to check industrial emissions. This can also help the government and the regulating agencies as well as the industries,” Ahmed says. The company also plans to publish free data to aid disaster management.

It has been a long road from Aldur where Ahmed’s parents still live – his father Nadeem runs a pharmacy with the help of his mother Ghazala – and all of it has happened in less than five years. 

What worked? Ahmed remembers the confidence carried over from the hyperloop project which included 30 undergraduate students with no frame of reference, working on the first principles and succeeding.

Pixxel, he says, has built on that confidence and backed it up to be relentless in effort – “Sometimes, all it takes is a group of passionate, determined individuals with enough resources. As they say, sometimes, the easiest way to get something done is to get started.”