LEAP-1 Mission

Launching Expeditions for Aspiring Payloads

LEAP-1 marks Dhruva Space’s first commercial endeavor on the P-30 satellite platform, hosting two In-Orbit Demonstration (IOD) missions: Akula Tech’s Nexus-01 with an advanced AI module, and Esper Satellites’ OTR-2 featuring a hyperspectral imager. 

Scheduled to launch aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 in Q3 2025, the mission represents a landmark Indo-Australian collaboration with growing U.S. support. 

Following the successful Space-qualification of the P-30 satellite bus on ISRO’s PSLV-C58 in January 2024, LEAP-1 demonstrates Dhruva Space’s transition to scalable hosted payload services for the global market. The mission will also leverage Dhruva Space’s Ground Station-as-a-Service (GSaaS) and ISOCS platform for real-time mission operations and data downlink.

Mission Details

Mission Name:

LEAP-1

Mission Type:

Hosted Payload

Hosted Payload Customers:

Akula Tech, Esper Satellite Imagery

Spacecraft:

Dhruva Space’s P-30 Satellite Bus

Launch site:

Vandenberg Space Force Base, CA, USA

Mission Specifications

Satellite Bus

P-30

Payload Mass

Up to 15 kg

Payload Volume

Up to 12U

Payload Power

Up to 50 W

LEAP-1

P-30 Satellite Bus

Compact & Modular

Hosted Payload Missions
Payload In-Orbit Validation (IOV) / In-Orbit Demonstration (IOD)
Multi-Payload Configurations
Body-mounted and Deployable Solar Arrays
3-axis stabilised for advanced missions
Optimised for Low Earth Orbit (LEO)

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Hosted Payload Customers

Payload:

OTR-2

Mission Specifications:

• 100 bands,
• 40 - 1000NM,
• 30M Spatial Resolution,
• 100,000 SQKM tasking capacity available

“

Esper’s OTR (Over The Rainbow) mission series is our proving ground — a series of low-cost, high-impact satellite launches designed to validate our hyperspectral imaging technology in space. OTR-1 marked the beginning, demonstrating Esper’s ability to capture and downlink usable spectral data from orbit. Now, OTR-2 builds on that foundation as the final demonstration before the launch of our operational constellation in 2026. It represents the culmination of lessons learned, technology refinements, and mission resilience — overcoming delays and swaps to get to the pad. OTR-2 is more than a satellite; it’s the closing chapter of our R&D era and the bridge to commercial scale.

Payload:

Nexus-01

Mission Specifications:

• Onboard Edge AI Inference
• Real-time Hyperspectral Processing (L0–L3)
• Parallel AI Model Execution on NVIDIA Jetson
• Actionable Intelligence Delivery in Minutes

“

Nexus-01 showcases Akula Tech’s novel in-orbit AI capability, a system that not only compresses and processes hyperspectral data from Level 0 to Level 3 on board, but also runs multiple AI models in parallel to extract real-time, actionable intelligence. This marks a shift away from traditional, ground-dependent architecture toward truly autonomous, software-defined satellites. With model conversion, compression, as well as the deployment to orbit, Nexus-01 delivers insights within minutes, not days. Designed for missions where time is critical, it’s built to think, act, and adapt in space, setting a new benchmark for actionable intelligence in Space.