ISRO to use Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket to launch heavy comms satellite

Musk, who is the chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla , is keen to bring his Starlink satellite broadband to India and is also discussing an investment proposal for Tesla to set up a factory there to make electric vehicles.

New Delhi, Jan 3: The Indian Space Research Organisation will use US billionaire Elon Musk’s company SpaceX’s Falcon-9 rocket to launch a 4.7 tonne communication satellite as India doesn’t have rockets to carry such heavy satellites to space.

NewSpace India Ltd, the public sector undertaking of the Department of Space Wednesday announced signing an agreement with SpaceX to launch GSAT-20 from its launch pad on the US west coast in the second quarter of the year.

The announcement marks a departure from India’s traditional arrangement of using the French company Arianespace’s rockets to take its heavy-weight satellites to space from the European spaceport at Kourou in French Guyana.

The GSAT-20 communications satellite is aimed at meeting India’s broadband, in-flight and maritime communications, and cellular backhaul services needs. "Bulk of the capacity on-board GSAT-20 satellite has already been secured by Indian service providers," the NSIL said, without specifying the buyer.

The NSIL-SpaceX agreement comes six months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden put a renewed focus on Indo-US space cooperation, making New Delhi a partner in the Artemis programme on space exploration and facilitating an Indian astronomer’s voyage to the International Space Station.

ISRO’s most powerful rocket GSLV-Mk3 is capable of putting into orbit four tonne class payloads in Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit, forcing the space agency to look for launch services outside the country.

"NSIL is realiasing GSAT-20 satellite through ISRO and will be launched on-board Falcon-9 under a launch service contract between NSIL and SpaceX, USA," the NSIL said in a statement. The Falcon-9 is capable of placing 8.3 tonne payloads into GTO.

The GSAT-20 offers high throughput capacity of nearly 48 gbps. The satellite has been specifically designed to meet the demanding service needs of remote regions including Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep.

To be renamed as GSAT-N2, the satellite will have Ka-Ka band high throughput satellite capacity with 32 beams having pan-India coverage. Last year the NSIL successfully undertook its first demand-driven satellite mission, GSAT-24 in June in which the capacity was fully secured by TataPlay.

ISRO is developing the Next Generation Launch Vehicle with a capacity to put a ten tonne payload in GTO, but this may take a few years to become a reality.

As part of space sector reforms announced by the government in June 2020, NSIL was mandated to build, launch, own and operate satellites in "demand-driven mode" for meeting service needs of the user. Presently, NSIL owns and operates 11 communication satellites in orbit.