Chennai, Feb 20 : In its first dedicated commercial mission of the newly-formed New Space India Limited (NSIL), the ISRO would be launch Brazil’s Amazonia-1 and 20 other satellites from the spaceport of Sriharikota on February 28.

ISRO on Saturday said the satellites would be launched using the

Space Agency’s workhorse launch vehicle PSLV-C51 at 1023 hrs

on February 28, 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.

It’s earlier mission was PSLV-C50, which had successfully launched

India’s communication satellite CMS-01 from the Satish Dhawan Space

Centre SHAR, on December 17, 2020. (UNI)