Weighing about 5,854 kg, being the first-ever “heaviest” satellite GSAT-11 built by India, was successfully launched by an Arianespace rocket in the earlies hours of Wednesday, from French Guiana.
Blasting off by Arianespace’s heavy Ariane-5 launch complex (VA246) at Kourou space centre, India launched its “heaviest” satellite into the orbit at 02:07 AM, along with a Korean weather monitoring satellite.
Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)stated: “ISRO’s heaviest and most-advanced high throughput communication satellite GSAT-11 was successfully launched from the Spaceport in French Guiana during the early hours today.”
ISRO chairman K Sivan said, “GSAT 11 is an advanced communication satellite. It is the largest and heaviest satellite built by ISRO. It will fulfill most needs of providing broadband connectivity to rural and inaccessible gram panchayats under BharatNet project.”
GSAT-11 satellite separated from the Ariane-5 upper stage after its 30-minute flight in an elliptical Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit. Further, it will be raised to Geostationary Orbit (36,000 km above the equator).
According to ISRO, the GSAT-11 satellite will provide “high-data” broadband connectivity to the parts of India. It will bridge the urban and rural divide. GSAT-11 is the third series of the four satellite aimed to achieve 100 GBPS high data connectivity in the country India under the Digital India Mission.
Two satellites- GSAT-19 and GSAT-29 have already been launched and the fourth GSAT-20 is set to launch next year. GSAT-11 was scheduled to be launched in May this year, but ISRO called it off for “some tests”.
ISRO official said, “ISRO wanted to ensure that there was no possibility of a similar communication loss. Nothing was found on testing the satellite and it was shipped back to Kourou for launch.”