Isro to launch first satellite developed entirely by Brazil's space agency

Emirates SkyCargo brings the satellite from Brazil to Chennai

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) is set to launch Amazonia-1, the first satellite to have been developed completely in Brazil by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), the Latin American nation's apex space research body. 

Emirates SkyCargo, the freight division of Emirates airline, has executed a cargo charter to transport Amazonia-1 from Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil to Chennai. This is the first time that Emirates SkyCargo has transported a space satellite from South America.

The earth Observation has been designed, assembled and tested in Brazil and took eight years to be developed. Once launched into space, it will help monitor the ecosystem of the Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest tropical rainforest. The satellite is due to be sent to space in February 2021 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the East coast of India.

The Amazonia series satellites are composed of two independent modules: a Service Module, which is the Multi-Mission Platform (MMP), and a Payload Module, which houses image cameras and equipment for recording and transmitting image data.

Amazonia-1 is a Sun synchronous (polar) orbiting satellite that can generate images of any part of the world every five days. For this, it has a wide-view optical imager (camera with 3 visible frequency bands - VIS - and 1 near infrared band - Near Infrared or NIR) with swath of 850 km and 60 meters of resolution

India and Brazil signed a Framework Agreement for cooperation in the field of outer space in January 2004. Apart from this, an agreement on the programme of cooperation between the two space agencies was also signed. Under this, Brazil received data from ISRO's remote sensing satellite ResourceSAT-1.

The two countries, in July 2014, also signed an agreement on cooperation to alter a Brazilian earth station to receive and process data from the Indian Remote Sensing satellites (IRS) series.

The agreements also meant that ISRO is obliged to make data from its projects available to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), the Brazilian executive agency receiving earth observation data, and remote sensing data from areas under the INPE's domain.