বাংলায় পড়ুন
Apart from space organisations like ISRO & NASA or private space companies like SpaceX, there are many independent space agencies too which are not much well known. However, like established space agencies, these small independent space agencies too design and launch satellites but on a much smaller scale. Although the satellites they launch are of much smaller scale, they produce similar results. One such independent space agency is Pixxel which was formed around 18 months back. Pixxel is founded by two young Indians - Kshitij Khandelwal, a 22-year-old BITS Pilani Alumni, and his classmate and colleague Awais Ahmed. And they are soon going to launch a bunch of satellites as small as a shoebox up in the space. Pixxel is currently working towards setting up the world’s smartest observation constellation of satellites and they want to set up high-quality image-capturing satellites to enable better data collection for a variety of applications including farming, weather, air quality etc. These image capturing satellites will be beneficial for the farmers, according to the founders of Pixxel. One of the founders – Kshitij explained, “The data that the satellites would capture, could give farmers information about crop diseases, identifying different crop species. And in countries like India where we have mixed cropping patterns, identifying different crops is difficult. So, our satellite information would give people access through different platforms where they could actually see if there is a pest infestation, where they can try to predict what the crop yield would be”. Pixxel has set up a compact team consisting of ex ISRO scientists and people involved with India's first private Lunar mission Indus for making this project a success. When asked about the cost of launching these satellites, Kshitij said, “Space is expensive, but we feel that India as a whole has an advantage in this industry because, given the way ISRO has functioned over the years, given the way the potential is there in this industry, we are able to build space infrastructure at a fraction of the cost, compared to anyone else in the world”.
