CEO of Safran Olivier Andries at the International Space Summit in Paris, on Thursday
| Photo Credit:
Aurelien Morissard
India’s Dhruva Space Private Ltd and France’s Safran Space have signed contracts worth more than €5 million for a larger project to build and deploy 275 satellites.Announced at the two-day International Space Summit in Paris which ended on Thursday, the collaboration between Dhruva and Safran is also meant for technologies to be used in India’s planned 52-satellite space-surveillance constellation.Safran Space has contracted Dhruva Space for supplying communication systems, inertial navigation units, optical payloads and ground stations for India’s planned Space-Based Surveillance Phase-III (SBS-III) project to provide real-time, all-weather intelligence across its borders and the Indian Ocean Region, as per summit announcements in Paris.The project to deploy a constellation of 52 satellites between 2026 and 2030 was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security in October 2024 with an allocated budget of ₹26,968 crore. Of this, 21 satellites will be built by ISRO and remaining by domestic private sector companies.“This collaboration between Dhruva Space and Safran is aimed at a larger project to build and deploy 275 satellites for which Dhruva Space made an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) filing earlier this year”, a senior Dhruva Space official told businessline.Application to ITUA company has to get official registration by submitting an application to the ITU to secure international recognition and protection for the radio frequencies and orbital slots a satellite network plans to use. The ITU does not issue licences or grant permission to launch satellites. Rather, it operates a “first-come, first-served” registry system based on priority dates to prevent harmful signal interference between different countries and operators. Parallelly, the Dhruva Space is building a 280,000 square-foot design, engineering, assembly, integration and testing (AIT) facility in a phased manner in Shamshabad, Hyderabad, since 2023 for executing the project.“In continuation to the ongoing commercial missions being delivered and the upcoming 280,000 sq. ft. AIT facility, the comprehensive collaboration between the companies will help strengthen the satellite program under the Satellite Bus as a Service Program and the upcoming Global Ground Station Network by Dhruva Space under the EO-PPP, both awarded by IN-SPACe earlier this year,” the official of the start up stated.At the summit, another French company, RIDE! — a launch-services provider — inked an agreement to launch two satellites for TakeMeToSpace, a Hyderabad-based space-tech start-up which designs orbital data centres.As per the announcement, RIDE! has several years of experience of working with Indian space companies, including the recent integration, launch and return of a European atmospheric re-entry capsule aboard polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV).To tap into India’s burgeoning commercial space sector, another French satellite manufacturer U-Space has partnered with Indian engineering services provider AXISCADES. The commercial cooperation agreement is meant to explore India’s microsatellite market under “Make in India” policy.Published on September 10, 2026
