• India’s first situational awareness observatory to monitor space activity is going to be set up in Uttarakhand by
• Digantara (which means space in Sanskrit) is a Bengaluru-based firm.

About Observatory 

• The space situational awareness (SSA) observatory will assist in tracking any activity in space including that of space debris and military satellites hovering over the region.
• It aims to track objects as small as 10 cm in size orbiting the earth.
• Significance: It will fill the crucial gap in SSA observations in the region as there is a lack of such facilities between Australia and southern Africa“.
  • The observatory will help to monitor events occurring in deep space, especially in the geostationary, medium-Earth, and high-Earth orbits.
  • The observatory will give India indigenous capabilities to monitor space activity over the subcontinent providing a strategic advantage.
• Global Scenario: At present, the United States is a dominant player in monitoring space debris. It has observatories in multiple locations with commercial companies providing additional inputs from across the world.