On-call desk that triages collision alerts for small Indian satellite operators
TL;DR Closepass is an outsourced flight-dynamics desk for Indian satellite startups. It reads every close-approach alert, decides which ones matter, talks to the other operator, and plans any manoeuvre for the client to approve. Operators pay a monthly fee per satellite instead of hiring a night shift.
Collision warnings are routine work now. In 2024 ISRO analysed more than 53,000 close-approach alerts for its Earth-orbiting satellites and carried out 10 avoidance manoeuvres[1]. ESA counts about 40,000 tracked objects, of which about 11,000 are active payloads, and says avoidance events go up every year[2].
ISRO has a dedicated team for this. A private operator with two satellites and twelve staff doesn't. By the end of 2024, 136 Indian spacecraft, including private and academic ones, had reached Earth orbit[1]. Each operator gets the same flood of alerts, often in the middle of the night, and few have anyone trained to judge them.
What it does, in regulatory terms: operational advice to the licensed operator. Closepass does not command satellites or hold an authorisation. The client remains the operator of record and approves every manoeuvre.
The desk takes each client's orbit data and the alerts sent to them. Engineers screen out the noise, rank the rest by risk and deadline, and escalate only the few that need a decision. For those, they contact the other satellite's operator to agree who moves, then send the client a manoeuvre plan ready to approve. Every event goes into a log the operator can show IN-SPACe or ISRO's space-safety team.
I reframed the seed, which pitched AI that predicts collisions. Prediction is mostly sorted already - the US Space Force screens satellites against its catalogue several times a day and emails warnings to operators for free[3]. The gap is the people who act on those warnings for small teams.
Indian satellite operators pay. That's earth-observation and communications startups, plus university teams running a satellite for a year or two. My assumption is a monthly fee per satellite, with a higher tier for satellites that can manoeuvre. The alternative is hiring two or three flight-dynamics engineers to cover nights, which a small operator rarely can.
In 2024 India declared that all its space actors, government and private, should fly debris-free missions by 2030, and ISRO's IS4OM now leads that work[1]. Private satellite counts are climbing, so the number of small operators without a safety team is climbing too.
There's no public figure for collision-avoidance services bought by Indian operators. The narrowest count is 136 Indian spacecraft in Earth orbit by the end of 2024[1], most of them small. Adjacent: about 11,000 active payloads worldwide[2], served by foreign firms. That's context, not your market.
One US tracking company runs its own radars and sells conjunction alerts and avoidance support[4]. A second US firm sells automated safety-of-flight alerts and coordination software[5]. A Bengaluru space-surveillance startup builds space-surveillance data products[6]. All three sell data and software. I didn't find an Indian service that runs the operator's on-call routine as a staffed desk.
| Difficulty | Moderate (41/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹55 L–1.1 Cr |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
The orbital mechanics is standard, and good tools exist to licence. Trust and staffing are the hard bits. Operators have to hand you their orbit data and let you speak for them to other operators, and a 24-hour desk needs at least four trained people before it earns much.
Closepass itself needs no space licence, because the client stays the operator of record. What matters is fitting into the client's own permissions.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Never let AI decide on its own whether a satellite moves. That call stays with a trained engineer and the client who approves it.
Want to work out the AI layer for Closepass? Talk to Yash →
I think this is a good niche, though a small one. It fits a founder from ISRO's flight-dynamics side or a foreign operator's operations team. If you're a pure software founder then it's not for you. Prove first that three Indian operators will pay a monthly fee and share orbit data within a month of signing.
Plan for about ₹55 L–1.1 Cr, mostly for trained flight-dynamics staff on a 24-hour rota and licensed analysis tools.
Not your own space authorisation, because the client remains the operator and approves every manoeuvre. Your clients hold IN-SPACe authorisation, so your logs and contracts have to fit their file.
Yes. Small operators everywhere get the same free US screening alerts, so the gap travels. Check the local space regulator's rules on who may advise an operator first.
The free Closepass validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the rules checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for satellite operators, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Closepass or something close to it? The make-or-break work is earning enough operator trust to act on their behalf at 3 a.m., and that's a sales problem I enjoy working on with founders. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.