OrbitAID

OrbitAID wants to refuel satellites in orbit. Its hardware is a docking and refuelling port, SIDRP, that a satellite carries from launch so a tanker can attach and pump propellant across later, plus the tanker itself, a robotic arm and a bolt-on propulsion pod for satellites never built to be refuelled. The reasoning is the standard one for servicing. A satellite's life is set by the fuel it carries rather than by its electronics, and India has a large and ageing fleet of ISRO-launched satellites.

Sakthikumar Ramachandran, who joined the Indian Institute of Science as a propulsion researcher in 2011, started the company in 2021 with Nikhil Balasubramanian and Mano Balaji K, and runs it from Chennai with a second facility in Bengaluru opened in September 2025. A $1.5 million pre-seed led by Unicorn India Ventures closed in January 2025, and an Indo-Australian MAITRI grant in October 2025 pays for the first flight of the refuelling interface.

The docking and fluid transfer have been tested twice on parabolic flights, in November 2024 and May 2025, which is weightlessness for seconds at a time rather than orbit. The company is building two satellites of about 110 kilograms each, a target and a chaser, to fly the whole sequence in one mission in early 2027, inspection, approach, docking, fuel transfer and an orbit raise, with the launcher still to be chosen between ISRO and SpaceX.