For the first time, India will launch a heavyweight communications satellite using SpaceX's Falcon-9 rocket this year. This will mark the beginning of India’s first partnership with a venture led by billionaire Elon Musk who also wants to expand his other businesses in the country, mainly in broadband, where India’s hunger for net connectivity is never-ending.
The high-capacity satellite will boost India's broadband communication, especially in remote and unconnected regions of the country, the state-run NSIL, the commercial arm of India's space agency, said in a statement on Tuesday.
Details about the satellite
The satellite weighs 4,700 kg, which exceeds the current highest spacecraft launching capacity of 4,000 kg of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The launch is scheduled for the second quarter of this year. Musk, who is the chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla (TSLA.O), has been in talks with New Delhi and is keen to introduce his Starlink satellite broadband to India which is viewed as a lucrative market.
He is also in discussion on an investment proposal for Tesla to set up a factory there to make electric vehicles. But he is facing a pushback from some in the country's domestic industry. NSIL said it will fully own, operate and fund the GSAT-20 high-throughput satellite, offering capacity of 48 gigabits per second. Early in the history of ISRO, the space agency had used Ariane rockets to launch satellites.
The Ariane Passenger Payload Experiment (APPLE) was ISRO's first indigenous communication satellite which was launched on June 19, 1981, by the third development flight of ESA's Ariane vehicle.
The 350-kilogram (770 lb) satellite was launched into Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) by the Ariane 1 rocket from Kourou. In 2020, ISRO's GSAT-30 satellite was successfully launched aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana. Ariane 5 is one of three launch vehicles operated by Arianespace.
