India’s own satellite

Press, 12 September 1984, Page 28

India’s own satellite

NZPA-Reuter Ahmadabad India will launch its own telecommunications satellite on its own rocket by the middle of the 19905, a top space official told Reuters, Mr E. V. Chitnis, director of the Space Application Centre in the north-western Indian city of Ahmadabad, said that in the first stage, an Indian satellite, Insat 2, would be launched aboard a foreign vehicle- about 1990. About five years after that, India would have completed its own vehicle, he saij The main satellite India

is now using, Insat 18, launched last year aboard a United States vehicle, was bought from the Ford Aerospace Communication Corporation. Insat IB has dramatically changed telecommunications in india, the director said. With the installation of one television transmitter a day, it will enable 70 per cent of the country to receive television by the end of the year. The satellite was also improving telephone services by linking remote areas and increasing the capacity on

existing truck routes, he added. Mr Chitnis said Insat IC, also bought from Ford, would be launched in June 1986 to supplement Insat 18, which has a seven-year life. He said India’s space programme, which employs 13,000 people, had made vital contributions to national life by providing more accurate weather forecasting and disaster warnings. A daily cloud picture it produces appears every night on national television’s weather forecast, Mr Chitnis said.