CHENNAI: A 25.5-hour countdown for Indian Space Research Organisation’s first launch mission of 2021 began at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at 8.54am on Saturday.
PSLV-C51 carrying Amazonia-1, an optical earth observation satellite from Brazil, and 18 other satellites will lift off from the first launch pad at the space centre at 10.24am on Sunday. The rocket will place the payloads in sun synchronous polar orbits.
The launch will be the 53rd flight of PSLV and the 78th launch vehicle mission from Sriharikota spaceport. PSLV-C51 is also the third flight using the ‘DL’ variant, which means the rocket is equipped with two solid strap-on boosters.
PSLV-C51/Amazonia-1 mission is the first dedicated PSLV commercial mission for NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), a government of India company under the department of space.
Isro said NSIL is undertaking the mission under a commercial arrangement with Spaceflight Inc, US. With this mission, Isro would have launched 342 foreign satellites from 34 countries.
The 18 other satellites in the present mission include Satish Dhawan SAT (SDSAT) built by Space Kidz India and UNITYsat, a combination of three satellites, designed and built by three colleges — Sri Shakthi Institute of Engineering and Technology in Coimbatore, JPR Institute of Technology in Sriperumbudur and GH Raisoni College of Engineering in Nagpur.
The other satellites are: SindhuNetra, an Indian technology demonstration satellite, SAI-1 NanoConnect-2, a technology demonstration satellite from the US, and 12 SpaceBEEs satellites for two-way satellite communications and data relay.