Chennai: Space tech startup Agnikul has decided to establish an industrial unit in Andhra Pradesh’s space city, located in Tirupati district, to support equatorial launch operations and build a space-based orbital data centre platform, it said on Friday.The company plans to enable end-to-end support for equatorial and low-inclination launch operations, which suit east-bound launches carrying communication payloads. ISRO’s primary space launch pads at Sriharikota are designed for these kinds of launches, which is about 110 km away from the space city. The upcoming launch complex at Kulasekarapattinam in Tamil Nadu’s Tuticorin district is designed for high-inclination, polar launches suitable for imaging payloads.Agnikul is set to invest over Rs 500 crore in the space city unit, while the scope of operations remains unclear. It also has a 350-acre rocket manufacturing and testing facility near Kulasekarapattinam. TOI understood that Agnikul’s move is part of launch market dynamics, which are split between demand for polar and equatorial launches and both facilities. Both facilities are expected to be key to the startup’s ambitions. Moreover, the company aims to build an AI data centre in low earth orbit for inferencing and has partnered with cloud infrastructure startup NeevCloud. The orbital data centre-related payloads are expected to be launched from Sriharikota.The Chennai-based space tech company setting up a facility in Andhra Pradesh comes at a time when neighbouring states are intensely competing to attract industrial projects and investments, raising discussions about Tamil Nadu’s ability to retain and attract startups. This move even drew criticism from a section of social media.Announcing the decision, Agnikul said it was humbled to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Andhra Pradesh govt, and this would directly complement efforts in Tamil Nadu, where its facilities will support launches to polar orbits. “AgnikulCosmos’s reusable Agnibaan launch vehicle has the capacity to extend its patented and extendable upper stage to be a platform that can host data centres. This stage extension adds to the effort of making Agnibaan fully reusable; the lower stage is recovered on a barge in the ocean and the upper stage is kept alive and extended beyond just one mission,” it said.
