Spaceflight Awarded Contract to Launch Brazil’s
Amazonia-1 Spacecraft
December 18, 2018
Spaceflight announced it was
awarded the contract to provide launch services for
INPE, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (in
Portuguese: Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais),
the research unit of the Brazilian Ministry of Science,
Technology, Innovation and Communications. The contract
award is the culmination of a multi-year, highly
competitive government procurement process among global
launch providers. Throughout the process, Spaceflight
was supported in Brazil by a local representative of the
Akaer Group.
Melissa Wuerl, vice president of
business development at Spaceflight, received the award
from INPE Director Ricardo Galvão in a ceremony, with
the presence of the Brazilian Space Agency President,
José Raimundo Braga Coelho, in São José dos Campos, São
Paulo Brazil, today, Tue., Dec. 18.
INPE’s Amazonia-1 satellite is the
first Earth observation satellite to be completely
designed, integrated, tested and operated by Brazil. Its
goal is to autonomously observe the national territory
of Brazil, in particular the Amazon region. Amazonia-1
is also the first satellite based on Brazilian Multi
Mission Platform (MMP), a general purpose service bus
for 500 kg class satellites.
Representing the largest spacecraft
Spaceflight has launched to date, Amazonia-1 weighs
approximately 700 kilograms and is 1.7 meters in
diameter and 2.6 meters tall. It will be the primary
spacecraft on the PSLV mission, with the excess capacity
filled by Spaceflight’s smallsat rideshare customers.
Targeting mid-2020, Amazonia-1 will be deployed to a
mean altitude 760 kilometers sun-synchronous orbit,
while the additional secondary rideshare spacecraft will
be deployed at a lower altitude.
Spaceflight will provide a
combination of launch and end-to-end mission management
services, as well as hardware for INPE. “We excel at
complex launch missions like this, and it’s an honor to
be selected to take INPE’s first Amazonia satellite to
space,” said Wuerl. “Our goal continues to be to provide
the most rideshare options for customers to get their
spacecraft into orbit—which ultimately benefits everyone
on board.”
The awarding of the Amazonia-1
launch comes on the heels of Spaceflight’s historic
dedicated rideshare launch of 64 smallsats on its SSO-A:
SmallSat Express mission aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9
earlier this month. With the success of SSO-A,
Spaceflight has now launched more than 210 satellites
since its founding in 2011. In addition, the company is
contracted to launch nearly 100 satellites in 2019 from
a variety of launch vehicles including Falcon 9, PSLV,
Antares, Electron and Vega.
Ricardo Galvão from INPE added,
“This contract represents a tremendous milestone for
INPE and we’re very pleased to be working with the team
at Spaceflight on our very first fully Brazilian
mission.”
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