BlueBird 6 communications satellite, developed by the US-based AST SpaceMobile, will be launched on board India’s most powerful rocket LVM3.
It is one of the heaviest commercial satellites, weighing 6.5 tonnes. The Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite arrived in India from the US on October 19.
“BlueBird 6, a US-licensed satellite, is scheduled to launch on December 15th from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in India,” the company said in a statement.
“When launched, it will feature the largest commercial phased array in low Earth orbit at nearly 2,400 square feet. This represents a 3.5 times increase in size over BlueBirds 1-5 and supports 10 times the data capacity,” it added.
This is the second collaboration between the US and ISRO. In July, the ISRO successfully launched the .5 billion NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar Mission (NISAR), aimed at taking high-resolution Earth scans with a capacity to penetrate through fogs, dense clouds, and ice layers.
“NISAR, launched on July 30, was jointly realised by NASA, JPL, and ISRO. It was the costliest satellite ever realised in the world, and was lifted off by the Indian launcher GSLV and placed perfectly in orbit,” V. Narayanan, ISRO Chairman, shared after the launch.
Weighing 2,392 kilograms, the satellite will scan the Earth’s landmass and ice-covered surfaces every 12 days with high-resolution imagery over a 242-kilometre swath, utilising SweepSAR technology for the first time.
Meanwhile, BlueBird 6's liftoff is being handled by New Space India Limited (NSIL), ISRO’s commercial wing.
LVM-3 had recently put India’s heaviest CMS-3 satellite, weighing 4.4 tonnes, into its orbit on November 2.
A three-stage launch vehicle, the LVM3 rocket can carry payloads weighing up to 8,000 kg to low-Earth orbit (LEO) and 4,000 kg to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO).
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