Chennai: In its first dedicated commercial mission of the newly-formed NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), the ISRO would launch Brazil’s Amazonia-1 and 20 other satellites from the spaceport of Sriharikota on 28 February.
ISRO said the satellites would be launched using the Space Agency’s workhorse launch vehicle PSLV-C51 at 1023 hrs on 28 February, subject to weather conditions.
‘PSLVC51 is the first dedicated commercial launch mission of NSIL. Amazonia-1, the primary satellite of this mission, will be the first Brazilian satellite to be launched from India’, ISRO tweeted.
Amazonia-1 is the optical earth observation satellite of National Institute for Space Research (INPE).
This satellite would further strengthen the existing structure by providing remote sensing data to users for monitoring deforestation in the Amazon region and analysis of diversified agriculture across the Brazilian territory.
The 20 co-passenger satellites included one from ISRO (INS-2TD), four from IN-SPACe (three UNITYsats from consortium of three Indian academic institutes and One Satish Dhawan Sat from Space Kidz India) and 15 from NSIL.
PSLV-C51 will be the 53rd mission of PSLV.
PSLV-C51/Amazonia-1 is the first dedicated commercial mission of NSIL, a Government of India company under the Department of Space.
NSIL is undertaking this mission under a commercial arrangement with Spaceflight Inc. USA.
This would be the first mission for ISRO in 2021 and 78th launch vehicle mission from SDSC SHAR.
Its earlier mission was PSLV-C50, which had successfully launched India’s communication satellite CMS-01 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, on 17 December, 2020.