ISRO will launch the heaviest United States commercial communication satellite named BlueBird 6 on December fifteen from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. The satellite is a low earth orbit communication satellite built by AST SpaceMobiles Incorporated, a company based in Texas. The announcement was made by the company on Saturday.
The company said that “BlueBird 6, a United States licensed satellite, is scheduled to launch on December fifteen. It is the first of AST SpaceMobile’s next generation satellites. When launched, it will feature the largest commercial phased array in low earth orbit at nearly two thousand four hundred square feet. This represents a three point five times increase in size over BlueBirds one to five and supports ten times the data capacity.”
The satellite will be placed in orbit by ISRO’s Launch Vehicle Mark three rocket. The rocket is also known as Bahubali. The launch is being managed by New Space India Limited, which is the commercial arm of ISRO. The organisation handles global launch contracts and aims to generate revenue for the government. The same rocket also launched India’s heaviest CMS three satellite that weighed four point four tonnes on November two.
BlueBird 6 weighs six point five tonnes and arrived in India on October nineteen from the United States. It was then taken by road to Sriharikota for integration with the LVM three launcher. The satellite is now going through fuelling and final checks before its launch.
Space researchers working on this mission aim to provide direct to device mobile broadband connectivity, fast communication and support areas with weak terrestrial networks. With this launch, AST SpaceMobiles will become the second satellite broadband customer to fly on the LVM three. The first one was Eutelsat OneWeb.
LVM three is a heavy lift rocket that is forty five point five metres tall. It has three stages and a lift off mass of six hundred forty tonnes. It can place heavy satellites in orbits that are six hundred kilometres above the earth.
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