India to launch communication satellite over weekend

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India to launch communication satellite over weekend

BANGALORE, India (AFP) Sep 22, 2003
India will launch its latest communication satellite Sunday with a projected mission life of 12 years, a top space official said Monday.
Madhavan Nair, the chief of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), said the INSAT-3E was slated to be launched from French Guyana Sunday by Ariane alongwith SMART-1 of European Space Agency and e-Bird of EUTELSAT.

"It is an exclusive communication satellite and will augment the present capacity of INSAT for communication and television services," Nair told reporters in this southern Indian city of Bangalore, the country's technology and aviation hub.

Nair said the 2,775-kilogramme (6,105-pound) satellite will have 24 transponders to receive radio signals.

Nair said currently 126 transponders were available for the commercial communication sector and that demand was outstripping supply.

"Of this (126 transponders) almost every one is identified for some application or other. There is no spare capacity at the moment. We have to build up spare capacity and we target close to 200 transponders by 2007," he said.

He said India was trying to tap the global communications market, an effort helped by its bilateral cooperation with a number of countries.

"We can capture the market with political support from other governments. There are players in the US and Europe who try to lure others towards their launches. So we also have to work out some strategy," Nair said.

He said the former chief of ISRO had talks with Israeli space officials for future cooperation in space.

"The specifics have to be worked out like if we develop some of the sensors jointly," Nair said. "There is also possibility of some collaborative experiments involving spacecrafts."

He added that ISRO, was also planning to launch a "reusable satellite within 18 months," adding that the plan was to put in orbit a spacecraft of about 500 kilogrammes (1,102 pounds) and later bring it back to the earth.

Nair said the "reusable satellite will be used for conducting scientific experiments on board and later analysing their results. The ISRO will undertake about three satellite launches every year, he added.


Anyone have any stats on how many statellites each country has up there? thxxx!
 
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