India trying to revive link with GSAT-6A

Image credit: ISRO

Bengaluru: Indian space scientists and engineers are making all-out efforts to establish a link with the communication satellite GSAT-6A launched on March 29, said an official on Tuesday.

"Efforts are on to establish the communication link with the satellite," an official from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told IANS here.

On Sunday, ISRO admitted that it lost the crucial link with GSAT-6A, two days after it was launched on board the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) from its spaceport in Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, 80 km northeast of Chennai.

The satellite was to be placed in its intended orbit 36,000 km above ground level after three orbit-raising manoeuvres from the space agency's Master Control Facility (MCF) at Hassan in Karnataka, about 180 km from Bengaluru.

The communication teams at the MCF are hopeful to restore the link when the 2,000 kg satellite will be closer to them by hovering over India on Tuesday, as it orbits around the earth above 36,000 km away for every 20 hours a day.

Former ISRO Chairman K. Kasturirangan believes that each glitch in the space field is dynamic and could not be predicted.

"Nothing is common when it comes to space and each glitch is dynamic and contemporary," he told IANS.

ISRO Chairman K. Sivan earlier told IANS that the data available with the space agency shows that the satellite was "alive" and that restoring the communication link was possible.

"We are going through the data meticulously to establish a link with the satellite," Sivan had said.

Sivan, however, asserted that the efforts to connect with the satellite would not affect or delay other ISRO's projects in any way.

With a life span of 10 years, the satellite, worth over Rs 240 crore, was meant to provide a platform for developing technologies that could be useful in satellite based mobile communication applications.