The Hindu Business Line : ISRO planning for indigenous launches

ISRO expects its Insat 4A, now a day old, to be its penultimate satellite that will be flown from outside the country. The indigenous GSLV rocket having qualified to fly the 2-tonne class Insat satellites, ISRO is phasing out costly procured launches, most of which have been on the European Ariane launcher.

As such, Insat 4B, which is slated for around June 2006 will be the last one to be launched from abroad, ISRO spokesman, Mr S. Krishnamurthy, told Business Line.

Thursday's launch of the 3080-kg 4A aboard old reliable Ariane-5 rocket has cost ISRO $50 million (around Rs 225 crore) besides insurance of Rs 60 crore. It built the satellite in Bangalore at a cost of Rs 200 crore. A flight aboard the GSLV at Rs 120 crore would almost halve ISRO's launch burden.

ISRO has been using Ariane rockets almost consistently since the 1981 free ride for its APPLE experiment. This was the 12th launch on a European launcher. ISRO has also used US rockets (Ford Aerospace's Delta and the space shuttle Challenger) for the early Insats and six Russian launchers for the remote sensing satellites.

For the smaller remote sensing satellites that fly at lower altitudes, it has entirely done away with procured launches since 1995. The GSLV flight can now launch an operational satellite. The space agency is making it fully indigenous with a homemade cryogenic engine. This launcher, called GSLV Mk2, is slated to fly by 2006-end. The GLSV-Mk3 for heavy, 4-tonne lifts is expected to be ready by 2008.

The further eight GSLV programmes (GSLV F4 to F 11) recently got a boost with the Centre's clearance for a five-year spend of over Rs 3,000 crore.

Insats have become revenue churners for ISRO in the past couple of years from the lease of transponders to private broadcasters and VSAT users.

The launch vehicle service is yet to take off, except for four small satellites that the polar rocket PSLV has launched.

Parallel with 4B, the satellite centre here is putting together 4C and Cartosat-2.

Insat-4A to cater to Tata Sky's DTH service

INSAT-4A, ISRO's brand new satellite now a day old in space, is expected to usher in direct-to-home television services beamed from domestic satellites.

The advanced communications satellite will be declared operational in a month's time, after which its entire Ku-band capacity will be handed over to the private DTH operator Tata Sky. The 3.08-tonne satellite has 12 high power Ku band transponders, all of which have been booked by Tata Sky venture.

So far, Doordarshan and the Zee group have been the only two DTH players, both beaming from NSS satellite transponders hired through ISRO. At least three players - including Sun TV, are said to be in the reckoning for space on the forthcoming Insats 4B and 4C.

The regular 12 C-band transponders capacity will also augment the communication and broadcast services, ISRO said.

Between Friday and Monday, engineers at the Master Control Facility, Hassan will start nudging 4A towards its final orbit 36,000 km above Earth's surface.

4A may reach its final slot in a week from now; all systems will be switched on by then and the payloads will be checked before it is declared operational around mid-January, the spokesman, Mr S. Krishnamurthy, said.

Soon after the launch from the European spaceport of Kourou in French Guyana, the ISRO Chairman, Mr G. Madhavan Nair, said the Insat capacity had now reached 174 transponders, catering to broadcast, telecom, public and private sector users.

The satellite was flown on the Ariane-5 rocket along with MSG-2, a European met satellite of EUMETSAT, at 4.03 a.m. IST.