INSAT-4B launched successfully

[unni]

Launched atop the 780 ton Ariane-5 rocket, the 3000 kg INSAT 4 B satellite has been successfully launched in space. The Rs 210 crore satellite built by ISRO in Bangalore, is a dedicated telecommunication satellite. The almost 15 storey high, 57 metre tall Ariane-5 rocket in its 31st launch from Kourou in French Guyana on the east coast of South America, put in the correct orbit the Indian satellite, 31 minutes into its launch.

The new bird in the sky, when declared operational a month from now, will add a total of 24 transponders to the already existing 175 that the Indian Space Agency owns. Today, the satellite has been placed in an intermediate orbit and will now slowly be moved to its final position 36,000 kilometres over India. The satellite is already under Indian command and the Master Control Facility at Hasan in Karnataka, which has acquired good signals from INSAT 4 B, says ISRO.

All eyes are now on the first fully commercial launch of PSLV from Sriharikota that is slated for next month.

The Ariane 5 ECA also launched another satellite. The Skynet 5A satellite, built by EADS Astrium for the British Ministry of Defence as part of the Paradigm public-private partnership, will be used to provide secure military communications for the British military and NATO.

Read full story here (NDTV) and here (SpaceToday).

I hope other DTH providers will also start soon.

[Ankur Gupta]

Reliance and Bharti will start their DTH service around october or so....

[Asfaq]

W00t !!! GO INDIA !!!

[rollcage]

Yo ... MAN,

Go India Go !! AAA YAA India ... Ooh Ya INDIA !!

..

I wish all those indians in nasa, watch swades .. start coming to ISRO

[unni]

Originally Posted by ankurgupta.me

Reliance and Bharti will start their DTH service around october or so....

Most of the 24 transponders in INSAT 4B have been already leased by Sun TV and Doordarshan. Sun DTH will start soon. Reliance and Bharti may rent transponders from outside India.

ISRO paid around Rs. 210 crore to Arianespace for launching the satellite, which cost Rs. 215 crore to build and has been insured for Rs. 60 crore. At Rs. 4.5 crore per transponder, ISRO is expected to get atleast Rs. 1250 crore from the satellite.

[Ankur Gupta]

Bharti and Reliance had booked transponders in INSAT 4C which went down into the bay of bengal...so their plans have been delayed..

[unni]

Immediately hit will also be Kalanithi Maran's Sun Group, which had booked space on Insat 4C for its DTH venture Sun Direct.

From here.

I don't think Reliance or Bharti booked any transponders in INSAT 4C. The reason I remembered about Sun was because of my mom. She was the most dissappointed in our family from the launch failure. We had cable connection earlier and she was a big fan of serials in Surya TV (Sun group owned Malayalam channel). Later, we subscribed to Dish TV and the Sun group channels weren't available in it. I had told her that if the satellite gets into orbit, the Sun DTH would start soon, and Sun's channel would also become available in Dish TV.

[deepak.krishnan]

Cheers to all those scientists who made the project a success!!!

When are we going to get satellite net connection

[NIGHTMARE]

i think V-SAT is satellite connection

[Wannabe_a_techie]

Originally Posted by NIGHTMARE

i think V-SAT is satellite connection

Yes that's right. it says so here:

VSAT

The VSAT technology is visually associated with satellite dishes that receive and transmit radio signals——but the term very small aperture terminal includes a Radio Frequency Transceiver (RFT) and a single-box hardware device (indoor unit), which decodes these signals and makes them readable by the connected user device (server, PC, printer, phone/fax, EPABX).

Multiple user devices receiving these signals from a single satellite dish and VSAT make up a Local Area Network (LAN) usually within one building or city. A number of such satellite dishes and VSATs along with the central transmitting satellite dish form a Wide Area Network (WAN), spanning across a region or the entire country.

A VSAT network has the capacity of carrying data, video, and voice signals. It also provides broadband internet service directly to the end user, which is particularly useful in remote locations. The same satellite that provides VSAT services is also used in transmitting television signals—in India the opening up of the Ku band wavelength has made Direct To Home (DTH) beaming of television channels possible.