IN-SPACe selects six AI space projects for seed grants

The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) has selected six Indian space-sector companies for seed grants under its AI INSPIRED programme, according to its published result. The projects cover landing navigation, orbital-object assessment, debris detection, spacecraft servicing, target recognition and spacecraft autonomy. Two additional companies are listed separately for mentorship and technical support.

The Times of India reported on October 29 that the programme has an outlay of up to ₹6 crore and each selected entity is eligible for up to ₹1 crore. Those figures are programme ceilings. The official result names the selected projects but gives no individual grant amounts or record of money being disbursed.

Agnikul Cosmos was selected to develop a vision-based navigation module using artificial intelligence for the final stages of precision landing. Digantara’s selected project is an evaluation suite called ARES. Both appear in the grant-in-aid table published by IN-SPACe.

EON Space Labs’ project, EON MIRAI, is an optical payload intended to process observations onboard for real-time space situational awareness and debris detection. The official title specifies field-programmable gate array hardware for the artificial-intelligence processing.

OrbitAID Aerospace was selected to develop machine-learning algorithms for estimating a spacecraft’s position and orientation for on-orbit servicing and refuelling. Omnipresent Robot Technologies’ project covers automated target recognition, with defence and docking among the applications listed in the result.

TakeMe2Space, listed as TakeMeToSpace in the official result, is the sixth grant recipient. Its selected project concerns adaptive spacecraft autonomy through artificial-intelligence upgrades to attitude determination and control systems, which establish and control spacecraft orientation, as described in The Times of India’s report.

Foucault and AkashaVeda Technologies are in the separate support category, rather than the six-company grant list. IN-SPACe lists mentorship, opportunities to use its facilities and those of ISRO to validate concepts and technologies, and consideration for Department of Space technology transfer. The result does not assign either company a cash award.

Foucault’s selected work is an autonomous spacecraft collision-avoidance system using artificial intelligence and machine learning. AkashaVeda’s project concerns artificial-intelligence mission management both onboard spacecraft and on the ground, according to the official result.

The original call was issued on February 25, 2026, IN-SPACe’s result page states. That is the application call’s date, not a dated announcement of the selections. The October 29 Times of India report establishes the current reporting date; the official result itself does not give a reliable selection date or a payment timetable.