BANGALORE: Built with a planned mission life of 12 years, INSAT-2E, the last of the 5 satellites in the INSAT-2 series has come to the end of its mission life after 13 years. It was launched on April 3, 1999 by the European Ariane-5 Launcher. Positioned at 83 Degree East Longitude in a geostationary orbit, INSAT-2E carried 14 C-band and 5 lower extended C-band transponders for various communication services along with a Very High Resolution Radiometer and a Charge Coupled Device (CCD) for meteorological observation. Controlled from the Master Control Facility at Hassan, 11 Communication Transponders of 36 MHz bandwidth aboard the satellite were leased to International Telecommunication Satellite Organisation (INTELSAT) for the first time in the history of India. As part of a commercial launch service agreement between Antrix Corporation, the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and ASTRIUM SAS, a French company, an advanced Remote Sensing satellite SPOT -6 weighing nearly 800 kg, built by ASTRIUM SAS, will be launched on-board ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), during the second half of 2012. Along with SPOT - 6 satellite, the PSLV, in its ‘core alone’ configuration, will also carry other co-passenger payloads.This Launch Services Agreement signed between ANTRIX and ASTRIUM is a part of the long term agreement signed between the two agencies in September 2008. In November 2010, under a commercial contract between ANTRIX and ASTRIUM, an advanced communication satellite HYLAS was successfully built by ISRO and ASTRIUM together for a EUROPEAN customer. “In the coming days, further collaboration possibilities between ANTRIX/ISRO and ASTRIUM would be explored,” a press release stated.
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