Spacecraft & payloads
Bus architecture from 10 kg cubesats through 200 kg micro-satellites; optical, SAR, hyperspectral, RF and communications payloads — designed and tuned to mission, not bought off the shelf.
Ashhar Farhan.
Engineering, spacecraft and the room where the satellite gets built. Farhan leads the technical organisation that designs, integrates, flies and commissions every Satellize program.
At a glance
- · Co-founder, 2018
- · CTO, Satellize
- · Based in Hyderabad
- · Leads spacecraft, ground & mission ops
Profile
The engineer behind every Satellize spacecraft.
Farhan co-founded Satellize (then Exseed Space) in 2018 and has led the engineering organisation since day one. Every Satellize spacecraft on orbit was designed, integrated and tested under his technical authority, and every sovereign ground station the company has signed has been stood up by his teams.
He is a veteran of the Indian amateur-radio and software-defined-radio communities — callsign VU2ESE — best known publicly for designing the Bitx and uBitx open-source HF transceivers used by tens of thousands of operators worldwide. The same disciplined, low-cost RF engineering shows up across every Satellize spacecraft and ground station.
Beyond engineering, Farhan co-founded and ran Lamakaan, the independent cultural and arts space in Hyderabad that has hosted theatre, music, film and civic conversation for over a decade. He is also a partner in the Exseed Electron Fund — India's first space-focused venture fund — through which the company itself was incubated.
At Satellize today he runs the technical organisation across spacecraft, ground systems, mission operations and the ISO Class 7 cleanroom in Hyderabad. He is a quiet operator: most of his public footprint lives in the missions themselves.
Areas of focus
Integration & test
ISO Class 7 cleanroom integration, environmental qualification, vibration and thermal-vacuum campaigns, and full mission readiness sign-off.
Ground & mission ops
S/X/Ka-band ground station design, encrypted command uplink, sovereign data ingest, mission control software and operator certification.
Sovereign delivery
Knowledge transfer doctrine, on-site embedding of engineering teams in client nations, and the operational playbooks that let sovereign teams take the helm.
Selected milestones
1990s — 2000s
Designer of the Bitx and uBitx open-source HF transceivers used by tens of thousands of amateur-radio operators worldwide. Callsign VU2ESE.
2010
Co-founded Lamakaan in Hyderabad — an independent arts, theatre, film and civic-conversation space, still going.
2018
Co-founded Exseed Space; partner in the Exseed Electron Fund. Led integration and delivery of Exseed Sat 1 — India's first private satellite.
2019
Delivered Exseed Sat 2 / AISAT on PSLV-C45 — the first private satellite launched from Indian soil — in six working days.
2020
Designed and commissioned the Hyderabad ISO Class 7 satellite cleanroom and integration facility.
2022
Engineering lead on EOS-04 / RISAT-1A integration with ISRO. Stood up the Tonga sovereign ground station; 84 hours of restored backbone.
2024
Released the modular Satellize bus platform spanning 10 — 200 kg payloads.