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India on Friday successfully launched its advanced weather satellite Insat-3D from the spaceport of Kourou in French Guiana, using a European launch vehicle, Ariane-5 (VA214).
After a smooth countdown that lasted 11 hours and 30 minutes, the launch vehicle lifted off right on schedule at the opening of the launch window at 1.24 am Indian time on Friday. After a flight of 32 minutes and 48 seconds, Insat-3D was placed in geosynchronous transfer orbit, an oval-shaped intermediate path from which the satellite will subsequently be moved to the final geostationary orbit using its own small rocket engines.
In the coming days, orbit-raising manoeuvres will be performed on the Insat-3D using the satellite’s own propulsion system to place it in the 36,000-km high geostationary orbit.
Soon after the separation of Insat-3D from Ariane-5’s upper cryogenic stage, the satellite’s solar panel automatically got deployed. Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) master control facility at Hassan in Karnataka took over the control of Insat-3D immediately.
Preliminary check-ups of Insat-3D‘s subsystems were performed and the satellite’s health is satisfactory, said ISRO.
After placing the satellite at 82 degree east orbital slot, ISRO plans to turn on the meteorological payloads of Insat-3D in the second week of August and to extensively test them.
With a lift-off mass of 2,060 kg, Insat-3D carries four payloads – imager, sounder, data relay transponder and satellite-aided search and rescue payload. Among them, the six channel imager can take weather pictures of the Earth and has improved features, compared to the payloads in Kalpana-1 and Insat-3A, the two Indian geostationary satellites providing weather services for the past decade.
The 19 channel sounder payload of Insat-3D adds a new dimension to weather monitoring through its atmospheric-sounding system, and provides vertical profiles of temperature, humidity and integrated ozone.
Data relay transponder, the third payload carried by Insat-3D, receives the meteorological, hydrological, oceanographic parameters sent by automatic data collection platforms located at remote uninhabited locations and relays them to a processing centre for generating accurate weather forecasts.
Insat-3D is also equipped with a search and rescue payload that picks up and relays alert signals originating from the distress beacons of maritime, aviation and land-based users and relays them to the mission control centre to facilitate speedy search and rescue operations.
ISRO has taken up the responsibility of end-to-end reception and processing of Insat-3D data and the derivation of meteorological parameters with India Meteorological Department (IMD), New Delhi. An indigenously-designed and developed Insat-3D Meteorological Data Processing System is installed and commissioned at IMD with a mirror site at space applications centre, Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh and Ahmedabad in Gujarat.
