NSIL’s satellite for Tata Play, GSAT-24, launched by Arianespace | India News

A European Ariane 5 VA257 rocket transporting two communications satellites lifting off from the Giuana Space Centre, Europe’s spaceport, in Kourou, French Guiana. (AFP photo)

BENGALURU: After several minutes of delay, the Ariane-5, the launch vehicle from French firm Arianespace lifted off from the spaceport in French Guiana and put into orbit Space PSU NewSpace India Limited’s (NSIL) GSAT-24 satellite.
NSIL’s first dedicated commercial satellite launch mission, the GSAT-24, is a dedicated satellite for Tata Play’s (formerly TataSky) direct-to-home (DTH) services.
While the lift-off was scheduled for 2.30am Thursday, the mission had a launch window between 2.30am and 4.13am on June 23 India time — or, 6.03pm and 7.43pm on June 22 Korou time.
Arianespace made an announcement at 2.28am that “complementary checks have postponed the lift-off by a few minutes in the launch window”.
Minutes before that the hosts on the firm’s dedicated channel had announced a 15-minute delay but didn’t elaborate on the cause.
A message then read: “Additional checks are being conducted and we will use the launch window extended time (sic).”
After a break the hosts said an anomaly was detected after the filling of the tanks and that it had been fixed and the litft-off was scheduled for 3.20am.
The Ariane-5 lifted-off exactly at 3.20am. As reported earlier by TOI, the mission was to launch two satellites — one for MEASAT, for the Malaysian satellite operator, and the GSAT-24 for NSIL.
For MEASAT, Arianespace launched the MEASAT-3d satellite, a multi-mission telecommunications satellite built by Airbus Defence and Space.
India’s GSAT-24 is a Ku-band 4-tonne class communications satellite built by Isro for NSIL. It will provide high-quality television, telecommunications and broadcasting services over India.
While MEASAT-3d separation happened some 30 minutes after the lift off, GSAT-24 separated around 10 minutes thereafter.
As first reported by TOI, NSIL had to use two Indian Air Force (IAF) C-17s for GSAT-24’s transport owing to geopolitical constraints making the availability of the preferred AN-124 aircraft difficult.
The first C-17 carried the satellite and some ground support equipment and the second one carried the other ground support equipment — from HAL airport in Bengaluru to French Guiana.
As part of space reforms announced by the Centre, NSIL has been mandated to undertake operational satellite missions on a ‘demand driven’ model, wherein the Space PSU has the responsibility to build/procure, launch, own and operate the satellite besides providing services to its committed customer.
Consequently, the GSAT-24 will be fully funded, owned and operated by NSIL on a commercial basis. Earlier, firms would get annual leases to utilise satellite capacity. In this case, Tata Play would have the transponders for a much longer time.