INSAT-2D launched successfully

India's new telecom satellite Insat-2D being lifted off by the Ariane-4 rocket from Kourou in French Guyana. BANGALORE, June 4: Insat-2D,...

India8217;s new telecom satellite Insat-2D being lifted off by the Ariane-4 rocket from Kourou in French Guyana.

BANGALORE, June 4: Insat-2D, the fourth satellite of the ISRO-built second generation INSAT series, was successfully launched today from Kourou, French Guyana, aboard the 97th flight of the Ariane space vehicle.

The 2079-kg satellite was blasted into space 28 min after a spectacular lift-off from the Atlantic Coast in an event brought live to millions of homes by Doordarshan, the government-owned television agency. The Indian Space Research Organisation ISRO said the satellite is now going around the earth once in 10 and half hours, in an elliptical orbit with a perigee distance closest to earth of 200 km and an apogee of 35,000 km.

INSAT-2D carries 23 transponders to provide television and telephone services. Together with the four INSAT satellites already in orbit, INSAT-2D and INSAT-2E, to be launched next year, will saturate the sky with enough transponders for lease to private and government agencies in the coming years.

ISRO said that an on-board motor will be fired for the first time at 6 am tomorrow.

Describing the event as a 8220;copy book launch8221; and 8220;very significant8221; for India, ISRO chairman Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan said, 8220;The launch is a major step in augmenting our telecommunication and mobile telephone services.8221; The mobile satellite service MSS transponder on-board INSAT-2D will enable the department of telecommunications DoT to offer mobile telephone services over the Indian sub-continent by the end of July, outstripping a similar service offered by INMARSAT.

The MSS facility, with a similar transponder on-board INSAT-2C, will pick up radio signals from the ground and transmit them back, enabling anybody with a briefcase-sized terminal to make or receive voice calls and transmit fax and data from anywhere in India.

The handheld system developed by the Centre of Telematics C-DoT along with the US company COMSAT8217; will also find use in ships, trains and vehicles, ISRO said.The broadcast satellite service BSS transponder will be useful for television agencies to transmit images and sound to their production centres even from the remotest corner of the country. The transponder will pick up signals sent by portable dish antennae and transmit these to production centres located thousands of kilometers away. The six extended C-band transponders will give a wider coverage of Doordarshan programmes without loss of quality from south east Asia to the Middle East.

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A few extended C-band terminals will support the V-SATS very small aperture terminals in extending communication support to enterprises under the remote area business message network8217;.

The extended C-band will enable organisations to establish intranets, connecting all their offices and branches located at different places. This network can be used to receive from and send to anywhere, voice, fax and data without depending on the DoT network.A number of captive government networks also operate in this segment.