GSAT-30: All 3 orbit raising manoeuvers completed successfully, says ISRO

Bengaluru, Jan 17: India's 'high power' communication satellite GSAT-30, aimed at providing high-quality television, telecommunications and broadcasting services, has successfully completed three planned orbit manoeuvres, and has reached its orbital home and deployed its solar arrays and antennas.

The cumulative duration of operation of the propulsion system for these manuoeuvres is 2 hours 29 minutes.

The satellite solar panels and antennas have been deployed and the satellite is placed in an orbit with a perigee (nearest point from Earth) of 35, 826 km and an apogee (farthest point from Earth) of 35,913 km with an inclination of 0.11 deg which is very close to its operational orbit.

''After the completion of three planned orbit manoeuvres, GSAT 30 nears its orbital home with its solar arrays and antennas deployed,'' ISRO said in a tweet.

Blasting off from the Ariane Launch Complex in Kourou, a French territory located in the northeastern coast of South America at 2:35 am IST, European space consortium Arianespace's Ariane 5 vehicle-injected GSAT-30 into the orbit in a flawless flight lasting about 38 minutes.

The 3,357-kg satellite, which was deployed from the lower passenger position of Ariane-5 launch vehicle (VA 251) into to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), is configured on ISRO's enhanced I-3K Bus structure to provide communication services from Geostationary orbit in C and Ku bands.

The satellite derives its heritage from ISRO's earlier INSAT/GSAT satellite series and is equipped with 12 C and 12 Ku band transponders. GSAT-30 is to serve as a replacement to the "ageing" INSAT-4A spacecraft services with enhanced coverage, ISRO has said, adding the satellite provides Indian mainland and islands coverage in Ku-band and extended coverage in C-band covering Gulf countries, a large number of Asian countries and Australia.

With a mission life of 15 years, GSAT-30 is an operational communication satellite for DTH, television uplink and VSAT services. The Bengaluru-headquartered ISRO has said the communication payload of GSAT-30 is specifically designed and optimised to maximise the number of transponders on the spacecraft bus.

According to the space agency, the spacecraft would be extensively used for supporting VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) network, television uplinking and teleport services, digital satellite news gathering (DSNG), DTH television services, cellular backhaul connectivity and many such applications. One Ku-band beacon downlink signal is transmitted for ground-tracking purpose, it added.

For its initial flight of 2020, Arianespace on its website said, it would orbit EUTELSAT KONNECT, a telecommunication satellite for the operator Eutelsat, along with GSAT-30, using an Ariane 5 launch vehicle from the Guiana Space Centre. EUTELSAT KONNECT - which was produced by Thales Alenia Space for Eutelsat - was riding in the upper position of Ariane 5's payload arrangement, and was released first in the flight sequence at 27 minutes following liftoff. Since the launch of India's APPLE experimental satellite on Ariane Flight L03 in 1981, Arianespace has orbited 24 satellites, including GSAT-30, for the Indian space agency.