CHAKSU — AI-Enhanced Satellite Tracking and Inspection System

CHAKSU is InspeCity’s dedicated sensing and relative-navigation payload, purpose-built to give the company’s servicing vehicles the ability to safely navigate during close-proximity and docking operations. It combines real-time tracking, AI-enhanced navigation, and high-resolution imaging sensors to allow InspeCity’s robotic platforms to approach a client or derelict satellite, characterize its motion, and inspect its exterior for damage, structural degradation, or fuel leaks — without requiring cooperative markers or prior detailed knowledge of the target’s state.

As the sensing and guidance layer of InspeCity’s stack, CHAKSU feeds precision relative-position and attitude data to the company’s RIG (robotic guidance) and VEDA (life-extension and deorbiting vehicle) platforms, enabling accurate rendezvous and docking even with non-cooperative resident space objects. The inspection data it gathers — high-resolution imagery and diagnostic sensor readings — allows satellite operators to assess anomalies remotely, informing decisions about whether a spacecraft is a candidate for repair, life-extension servicing, or responsible deorbiting.

InspeCity designed CHAKSU to be modular and reusable across its family of servicing missions, rather than a single-use instrument, so it can support a pipeline of customers needing pre-servicing diagnostics as India’s commercial in-orbit servicing and active debris removal market matures. The system has completed design and simulation work and is progressing into manufacturing.

By offering inspection as an integrated part of a broader on-orbit servicing stack — rather than a standalone flyby mission — InspeCity aims to reduce the cost and risk for satellite operators of diagnosing problems in orbit, supporting the company’s larger vision of sustainable, serviceable space infrastructure.