A team from India, including scientists from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), are now in French Guiana overseeing the preparations for the July 25 (between 1:23 am and 2:41 am IST of July 26, 2013) launch of the Insat-3D.
The Insat-3D is a meteorological, data relay and satellite-aided search and rescue satellite. The IMD is expected to be the biggest beneficiary of the satellite.
The final payload integration has been completed for Arianespace’s next heavy-lift flight, with the Insat-3D weather satellite integrated atop the Ariane 5 launcher at the spaceport in French Guiana.
"The final tests are now going on, on the satellite before its launch," said senior level sources from the ISRO.
ISRO is a prime customer of Arianespace and it contracts Ariane launcher to launch its communication satellites into a geosynchronous orbit, 36,000 km above earth. The space agency is yet to fully achieve its own capability in this class with the GSLV even as it can put smaller satellites into the lower orbits on the PSLV rocket.
The Insat-3D will have Europe’s Alphasat telecommunications relay platform for company. The spacecraft is installed in the lower payload position for Ariane 5’s dual-passenger mission.
The Insat-3D’s mating occurred in the upper levels of the Spaceport’s Final Assembly Building for Ariane 5. The satellite is adapted from India’s I-2K spacecraft bus and has a liftoff mass of approximately 2,100 kg. It was developed by the ISRO's ISRO Space Applications Centre.
Carrying a six-channel imager and 19-channel sounder, Insat-3D will provide enhanced meteorological observation and the monitoring of land/ocean surfaces. The satellite also carries a data relay transponder, as well as a system to assist in satellite-aided search and rescue operations.
Insat-3D’s co-passenger for the upcoming Ariane 5 flight is the 6,650-kg. Alphasat satellite, which is one of the most sophisticated commercial communications spacecraft ever built, according to Ariancespace. Developed by Astrium, it is configured with an advanced, new-generation L-band geo-mobile communications relay system to augment Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) service provided by the UK-based telecommunications operator Inmarsat – enabling increased-capacity communications across Europe, Asia, Africa and West Asia.
Alphasat is a public-private partnership involving Inmarsat and the European Space Agency (ESA), and represents the first flight model of Europe’s new Alphabus high capacity satellite platform. It will ride in the upper portion of Ariane 5’s payload “stack", Arianespace added.
The July 25 mission with Ariane 5 – designated Flight VA214 in its launcher family numbering system – will be Arianespace’s third heavy-lift launch in 2013 from the Spaceport. In addition, Arianespace has conducted one mission each at French Guiana of the medium-lift Soyuz and lightweight Vega members of its launcher family.
