The Hindu : National : EDUSAT orbit raised

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Wednesday, Sep 22, 2004

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National

EDUSAT orbit raised

By T.S. Subramanian

CHENNAI, SEPT.21. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), today lifted the orbit of EDUSAT, India's first satellite exclusively for educational services, today by sending commands from the Master Control Facility at Hassan, Karnataka. The Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) on board EDUSAT was "commanded" to fire for 50 minutes.

The Geo-Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-F01), which lifted off from Sriharikota yesterday, placed EDUSAT in a perfect, elliptical geo-synchronous transfer orbit with an apogee of 35,585 km and a perigee of 180.54 km. With the satellite in an elliptical orbit now, the LAM will be fired three times to lift the satellite into a circular orbit, from where it will circle the globe at a height of 36,000 km. The LAM, a small rocket with hydrazine fuel, will propel the spacecraft into a circular geo-synchronous orbit.

It will be fired again tomorrow to further lift EDUSAT's orbit and later for the third time. Then the satellite's two antennae will be deployed and checks done on its transponders.

According to P.S. Goel, Director, ISRO Satellite Centre, Bangalore, EDUSAT will become operational in a month. The satellite's solar panel was deployed perfectly soon after being injected into orbit. The coming days will see "major operations" in firing the LAM and deployment of the antennae. Dr. Goel said the GSLV-FO1 flight was "such a perfect flight" that "I have no words to express it." The flight success "is really a moment to enjoy," he added.

Tracking stations at Biak in Indonesia; Lake Cowichan in Canada; Fucino in Italy; and Beijing in China are tracking EDUSAT, and telemetry signals received have showed that its "health is good."

Distance education

EDUSAT, which has transponders for the different regions, will boost distance education in the country. Transponders are electronic devices that receive, amplify and retransmit electromagnetic waves sent from ground stations. Thus programmes are telecast. A specialist can simultaneously teach hundreds of students in different colleges in various parts of the country. From a television studio, the teacher explains a subject, and in colleges with reception facilities, students can see and listen to him. If colleges with interactive facilities, students can put questions and receive replies. Since EDUSAT has regional beams, teachers can conduct classes in regional languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati and Oriya.

A forerunner

As a forerunner to EDUSAT, ISRO launched a project using INSAT-3B. Under this, 107 engineering colleges affiliated to Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belgaum, Karnataka, were interconnected. These colleges will switch over to EDUSAT once it becomes operational.

Anna University, Chennai, will, by December, become the site for EDUSAT's earth station from where regional channels will be hooked up. According to R. Sreedhar, Director, Audio-Visual Research Centre of Anna University, the university will be one of the first institutions to get a transponder during the semi-operational phase of the EDUSAT programme implementation.

Dr. Sreedhar said: "We have already starting airing programmes for an experimental network (called Anna University Training Development and Communication Channel) of 25 engineering colleges, using INSAT-3B. This is telecasting live three hours of programmes every day, reaching the 25 colleges. All this, along with future channels, will be transferred to the EDUSAT."

Several institutions, including the Y.B. Chavan Open University, Nashik, Maharashtra, the Rajiv Gandhi Technical University in Madhya Pradesh, and the Indian Institutes of Technology have signed memoranda of understanding with ISRO for using EDUSAT.

Twenty more MoUs are in the pipeline.

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