Pradeep's Space Newsletter #18
PSLV-C51 and other space reads
PSLV C-51/Amazonia 1 Mission
On February 28, NewSpace India Ltd (NSIL) will fly it’s first commercial mission. As per ISRO’s original press release the mission was to carry Brazil’s Amazonia 1 and 20 passenger satellites.
NSIL is undertaking this mission for USA’s Spaceflight Inc. , a US based launch services provider.
The primary payload for this mission is Brazil’s space research agency, INPE’s Amazonia 1 satellite. This is an Earth observation satellite. Aditya Ramanathan and I had a chance to sit down for an interview with the Mission Director, Adenilson Silva that has come out yesterday morning (podcast and video).
The satellite will also be a technology demonstrator for the Multi-Mission Payload (MMP) platform that INPE is building. It will provide Brazil with remote sensing data that will help to keep a check on deforestation of the Amazon rain-forest and agriculture in Brazil.
Two satellites from the list, Pixxel’s Anand and ISRO’s Indian Nano Satellite (INS-2TD) seems to have gone off the updated flight manifest. Pixxel had a statement on the cause of their removal. No such luck on the reason why INS-2TD is not flying.
There are now 14 satellites on the commercial ride-share basis. There are 12 SpaceBEE satellites used for communication and data relay. There is one Sindhu Netra satellite that was built by students at PES University with funding from Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). There is SAI-1 Nanoconnect-2 satellite built by the Space Instrumentation Laboratory (LINX) of The National University of Mexico (UNAM). The last two are technology demonstration satellites.
There are 4 satellites that are on the ride-share sponsored by INSPACe. These are three satellites called UnitySAT. These are built by three universities in India, JITsat by Jeppiaar Institute of Technology (Sriperumbudur), GHRCEsat by G H Raisoni College of Engineering (Nagpur) and SriShakthiSat by Sri Shakthi Institute of Engineering and Technology (Coimbatore). There is SDSat built by SpaceKidz India.
Godspeed, PSLV-C51! All the best.
Space Reads
Chandrayaan 3 and Gaganyaan delayed because of COVID-19. Despite being in the Finance Minister’s speech Chandrayaan 3 has been delayed.
Where would Perseverance land on Earth, if it had landed on the same latitude and longitude on Mars? Somewhere near the Maharashtra-Telengana border, it would seem.
Australia to provide temporary ground station at Cocos Island for Gaganyaan uncrewed mission.
r/ISRO has a collection of papers submitted for the 39th annual meeting of the Astronomical Society of India. The papers are from the Chandrayaan 2, Aditya L1 and Astrosat missions.
Raj Bhagatt P on the new geo-spatial guidelines rolled out by the Ministry of Science and Technology.
