ISRO launches its heaviest satellite till date

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on December 5 successfully launched its heaviest and most-advanced communication satellite GSAT-11. The government-run space agency said that the launch vehicle Ariane 5 VA-246 lifted off from Kourou Launch Base, French Guiana, carrying India’s GSAT-11 and South Korea’s GEO-KOMPSAT-2A satellites. The 5,854-kg GSAT-11 will provide high data rate connectivity to users of Indian mainland and islands, boosting broadband connectivity to rural and inaccessible Gram Panchayats in the country coming under the Bharat Net Project, which is part of Digital India Programme.

The Bharat Net Project aims to boost the public welfare schemes like e-banking, e-health, e-governance among others. GSAT-11 will act as a forerunner to all future high throughput communication satellites. ISRO scientists will undertake phase-wise orbit-raising manoeuvres in coming days to place the satellite in the Geostationary Orbit, 36,000 km above the equator. GSAT-11 will be positioned at 74-degree east longitude in the geostationary orbit. Subsequently, the two solar arrays and four antenna reflectors of GSAT-11 will be deployed in orbit. It will be operational after successful completion of all in-orbit tests.

In the last 21 days, ISRO successfully completed three satellite and two launch vehicle missions. ISRO on November 29 had successfully launched 31 satellites, including an earth observation satellite from India named Hyper-Spectral Imaging Satellite (HysIS), as well as 30 foreign satellites. This came 15 days after the GSLV MkIII-D2 mission which launched the GSAT-29 communication satellite. With GSAT-11, India how has 47 operational satellites with one more launch expected this month. In 2019, ISRO expects to launch 12 to 14 missions, including the long expected India’s second mission to moon, Chandrayaan II.