Chennai, Feb 6 (IANS) India's 40th communication satellite GSAT-31 was successfully put into orbit by an Ariane 5 rocket belonging to Arianespace on early Wednesday, said Indian space agency ISRO and Arianespace.
According to Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the telecommunication satellite, GSAT-31 was successfully launched on February 06, 2019 from Kourou launch base, French Guiana by Ariane-5.
The 2,535-kg GSAT-31 would augment the Ku-band transponder capacity in geostationary orbit.
According to ISRO, GSAT-31, with a mission life of 15 years, will be used for supporting VSAT networks, television uplinks, digital satellite news gathering, DTH television services, cellular back haul connectivity and more.
The GSAT-31 will provide continuity to operational services on some of the in-orbit satellites, ISRO said.
The two Ku-band beacon downlink signals are transmitted by the satellite for ground tracking purpose, it said.
According to Arianespace, it opened its 2019 mission activity by successfully orbiting a pair of telecommunications spacecraft - Saudi Geostationary Satellite 1/Hellas Sat 4 (HS-4/SGS-1) and GSAT-31 with Ariane 5 rocket.
Arianespace CEO St?phane IsraAl confirmed the success in post-launch comments from the spaceport's control room. "For the first Ariane 5 launch of the year, our heavyweight vehicle has once more performed flawlessly," he was quoted as saying in a statement.
IsraAl said that GSAT-31 was the 23rd ISRO satellite orbited by Arianespace and Ariane-series launchers, tracing the relationship back to India's APPLE small experimental communications spacecraft, lofted in 1981 by an Ariane 1 version.
He added: "Arianespace is honoured ISRO has entrusted Ariane 5 for two launches back-to-back, with the last Ariane 5 of 2018 launching GSAT-11, and today the first one of the year 2019, which orbited GSAT-31!"
With today's success, Arianespace kicks off a busy launch schedule in 2019 -- which targets up to 12 missions from the Spaceport with the heavyweight Ariane 5, medium-lift Soyuz and lightweight Vega.
About Gopi
Gopi Adusumilli is a Programmer. He is the editor of SocialNews.XYZ and President of AGK Fire Inc.
He enjoys designing websites, developing mobile applications and publishing news articles on current events from various authenticated news sources.
When it comes to writing he likes to write about current world politics and Indian Movies. His future plans include developing SocialNews.XYZ into a News website that has no bias or judgment towards any.
He can be reached at gopi@socialnews.xyz