Bangalore, August 30
India’s maiden dedicated defence satellite was launched by an European rocket early today, giving a boost to Navy’s modernisation push to improve space-based communications and intelligence gathering over a wide oceanic region including the country’s landmass.

Custom-made for the Navy by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the advanced multi-band, state-of-the-art GSAT-7 was successfully lofted into space by European space consortium Arianespace’s Ariane 5 rocket at 2 am from Kourou spaceport, French Guiana.

In an impressive launch telecast live by Doordarshan, Ariane 5 precisely placed the Rs 185-crore home-built communication spacecraft into the intended Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) after a flight of 34 minutes 25 seconds duration.

The Navy will be the user of the multi-band home-built communication satellite that is expected to become operational by September end. The unique nature of Indian Navy’s work, that includes visiting foreign ports and stationing itself in waters of foreign nations to protect the host nation’s maritime interests and carrying out hydrographic surveys on their behalf and above all protecting Indian interest in the Indian Ocean, has made the Navy the natural choice for becoming the first recipient of the execusive satellite-based communication service.

ISRO’s Master Control Facility (MCF) at Hassan in Karnataka started acquiring signals from the satellite five minutes prior to its separation from the launch vehicle. The solar panels of the satellite have been deployed and they are generating power.

Between August 31 and September 4, three orbit-raising operations will be performed by ISRO to place the satellite into the geostationary orbit. By September 14, GSAT-7 is slated to be positioned in its final orbital slot of 74 deg east longitude and subsequently the satellite’s communication transponders will be switched on.

Asset for maritime security

• Expected to be operational by September-end, the country's first exclusive satellite for military applications would give a major push to the maritime security
• GSAT-7 would provide a wide range of service spectrum from low bit rate voice to high bit rate data communication
• Its payload is designed to provide communication capabilities to users over a wide oceanic region, including the Indian land-mass