Indian Team’s Satellite Internet Concept Wins NASA’s 2025 Space Apps Challenge

Washington: An Indian team proposing a sovereign, phased-array satellite internet infrastructure to expand broadband access in remote regions has emerged as a global winner of NASA’s 2025 International Space Apps Challenge, the US space agency announced.

The Chennai-based team, Photonics Odyssey, received the Most Inspirational Award for reimagining satellite internet as a national public infrastructure rather than a private service. Their concept aims to reduce reliance on ground-based systems and connect more than 700 million people in India who currently lack broadband access.

According to NASA Space Apps, the winning team members are Manish D., M. K., Prasanth G., Rajalingam N., Rashi M., and Sakthi R.

NASA said the 2025 edition of its flagship global hackathon drew over 114,000 participants across 551 local events in 167 countries and territories, making it one of the agency’s largest international STEM collaborations. Winners were selected from more than 11,500 project submissions and evaluated by judges from NASA and partner organisations.

“The Space Apps Challenge puts NASA’s free and open data into the hands of explorers around the world,” said Karen St. Germain, Director of NASA’s Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Indian American students and participants of Indian origin also featured prominently among the winners, underscoring the strong presence of the Indian diaspora in global science and technology innovation.

The Best Use of Data Award went to Resonant Exoplanets, a US-based team that developed an AI-powered system to automatically analyse large volumes of telescope and satellite data to identify exoplanets and detect possible biosignatures. The team—Adhvaidh S., Gabriel S., Jack A., and Sahil S.—worked on the challenge “A World Away: Hunting for Exoplanets with AI,” using datasets such as spectra from the James Webb Space Telescope.

Another winning project with Indian-origin participation was Astro Sweepers, which received the Galactic Impact Award at a universal event. The team—Harshiv T., Pragathy S., Pratik J., Sherlin D., Yousra H., and Zienab E.—developed an end-to-end orbital debris compliance and risk intelligence platform that ingests public orbital data to generate debris assessment reports and compute risk indices for resident space objects. The project addresses operational, regulatory, and environmental challenges linked to the commercialisation of low Earth orbit.

Launched in 2012, the International Space Apps Challenge is NASA’s annual global hackathon that engages citizens worldwide to solve real-world problems using the agency’s open data. Over the years, it has grown into one of the world’s largest collaborative platforms for STEM innovation.

With inputs from IANS