ISRO’s commercial arm NSIL to launch first demand-driven satellite by next year

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In its first demand-based communication satellite, NewSpace India Ltd (NSIL), the newly created commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has announced the launch of a satellite mission as part of Space reforms initiated by the Indian government last year. Under the mission, the satellite named GSAT-24, a 4,000 kg Ku-band satellite, will be launched by Ariane-5 rocket, which belongs to French company Arianespace. All transponders of the satellite are dedicated to DTH services and the entire satellite capacity onboard GSAT-24 will be leased to Tata Sky for them to meet their DTH application requirements.

It’s a collaborative effort and the satellite will be owned and operated by the commercial arm NSIL, which also acts as an intermediary agency between the India Space Agency, Europe’s Arianespace, and Tata Sky.

As part of the Space reform initiative, NSIL, incorporated in 2019, was given the mandate to undertake an operational satellite mission that is based on a demand-driven model wherein the PSU will be responsible to build, launch, own & operate a satellite and subsequently will provide services to the dedicated customers.

Know more about NSIL:

As mentioned above, NSIL is known as the commercial arm of the Indian Space Agency, ISRO, which has been created with the objective to commercialize the research work and capabilities of the ISRO. NSIL is eyeing to emerge as an Indian communications satellite operator that can provide DTH and broadband services to customers on demand. Since NSIL will own & operate the satellite, it will make the commercial arm a kind of satellite operator. This initiative is taken to maximize profits from satellite launches and to give space to ISRO to increase their efforts and focus on advanced research and development.

Earlier this year, the first dedicated launch of PSLV-C51 was kicked off by NSIL, which was lifted off from Brazil’s Amazonia-1 satellite, along with 18 co-passenger satellites from Sriharikota. Amazonia-1 was the dedicated earth-observation satellite by the National Institute for Space Research of the South American country. Apart from this, various other projects are in pipeline including ISRO’s yet-to-be-launched SSLV (Satellite Launch Vehicle) or mini-PSLV projects along with other rockets.