TAPAS-1 is India’s first dedicated commercial CubeSat-category thermal payload. It is designed to capture temperature information invisible to conventional optical imagery using Thermal Infrared (TIR) sensing and enable the in-orbit demonstration and validation of SatLeo’s thermal-sensing technology, payload performance, and data-processing capabilities. The mission is an early step in India’s private-sector push towards commercial long-wave infrared (LWIR) Earth observation.

The mission is also expected to support SatLeo’s development of next-generation thermal intelligence platforms, with applications spanning climate monitoring, agriculture, urban heat mapping, disaster management, and infrastructure monitoring. It also represents a key step towards PYRO, SatLeo’s planned flagship thermal constellation. 

SatLeo’s thermal technology has already moved from concept to. In Tumakuru, Karnataka, satellite- and drone-based thermal monitoring has helped the city corporation track methane build-up at a 40-acre landfill and map urban heat islands, replacing reactive, complaint-based responses with more proactive, data-led governance. In Ahmedabad, working with the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, SatLeo’s platform delivered heat forecasts accurate to within 2–3°C, issuing QR-code heat advisories to outdoor workers and giving health teams advance notice to prepare for extreme heat.

In an exclusive interview with ETV Bharat, Urmil Bakhai, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of SatLeo Labs, Ahmedabad, talked about TAPAS-1, its in-orbit demonstration, the planned PYRO thermal constellation, and the applications of high-resolution thermal data. The following is an excerpt from the interview: 

Anubha Jain (AJ): Where did the idea for developing this thermal payload originate, and how did the opportunity come about for TAPAS-1 to be selected for this mission?

Urmil Bakhai (UB): SatLeo Labs was established in 2023, and from the very beginning, we were interested in building and launching our own satellite constellation, particularly for thermal imaging—a relatively underexplored area in Earth observation. Most satellites today either use optical imaging, which shows what objects look like, or synthetic aperture radar, which can image through clouds.

Thermal imaging offers something different. It can help us understand not just how objects look, but how they behave by capturing their heat signatures. That is what attracted us to this technology. Our long-term vision was to build a constellation of around 12–15 thermal-imaging satellites, which we call PYRO. But before moving towards that, we needed a technology demonstrator.