Chikkamagaluru: Awais Ahmed, a 23-year-old youth hailing from Aldur village of Chikkamagaluru district, and his aerospace manufacturer company Pixxel, are all set to launch the country's first private satellite by December 2021.
The date of the launch and name of the satellite is yet to be fixed. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the satellite was not launched last year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already extended support to Ahmed.
Ahmed's satellite is claimed to be India's first satellite built by a private firm to be launched from Indian soil. Even though the launch was planned from Russia, it was Ahmed's dream to launch the satellite from Indian soil.
India’s first private satellite was launched into space by Elon Musk’s SpaceX in 2018. It was launched from the Vandenberg air force base in California along with 63 other satellites from 17 other countries.
Pixxel was Asia's only space startup to qualify for the 2019 Techstars Starburst Space Accelerator in Los Angeles. The firm aims to put a constellation of 30+ earth observation micro-satellites into a sun-synchronous orbit in two to three years. Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal set up the company in February 2019 while they were studying in Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani.
Ahmed's father, Nadeem Ahmed said that his son is very talented and was a prodigy while studying in BITS Pilani. "The satellite will produce data that would be 50 times more than other satellites," according to Ahmed's father. He claimed his son's satellite will be the first private vehicle to be launched from Indian soil.
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