Context: Recently, Indian tech start-up Digantar Research and Technology developed India’s first in-orbit space debris monitoring and tracking system based on Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology.
About India’s first in-orbit space debris monitoring and tracking system

• Developed by Digantara, India’s first air and space Surveillance Company.
• The system works on LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology.
• The monitoring system provides global real-time earth coverage by deploying a constellation of cost-efficient Nano satellites in LEO (Low Earth Orbit) and a space-based air surveillance payload for accurate tracking of both aircraft and space objects.
• The space-based debris monitor, unlike ground-based equipment, is not affected by the atmospheric distortions, weathers and can closely monitor debris of much smaller size between 1cm to 10cm present in the Low Earth Orbit ecosystem.
• The system will help international space agencies to track and map space debris.
• This will aid to minimize the major threats of future space exploration.

Note: A Low Earth Orbit lies at an altitude of less than 1000 km.

About Lidar technology

• LiDAR stands for light detection and ranging. 
• LiDAR was first used on a spacecraft during the Apollo 15 mission in 1971, when astronauts mapped the surface of the moon.
• It is basically a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure distances to the subject. 
• A LiDAR sensor fires off beams of laser light and then measures how long it takes for the light to return to the sensor.
• The basic mechanism is known as “time of flight” measurement in which a laser beam is emitted towards an object, reflected off of the object and then collected in a sensor located within the LiDAR module. 
• Provide more information: These light pulses – when combined with other data, generate accurate, high-resolution three-dimensional information of the object.