BANGALORE - India is set to launch Sunday a communications satellite that will replace one destroyed last year when the rocket carrying it into space failed.
The 49-metre (1,481-feet) high satellite launch vehicle, or GSLV, will lift the satellite into space at 4:20 p.m. local time (1050 GMT) from Sriharikota space station in southern India, a spokesman for the space agency said here.
"The launch is crucial to the extent that the high-powered satellite will augment the country's communication capacity and help meet increasing demand," said the spokesman for Bangalore-based Indian Space Research Organisation.
He cited a boom in telecommunications, from facsimile and Internet traffic to satellite television, video transmission and digital satellite newsgathering, whose requirements will be met by the Insat-4CR satellite.
Insat-4CR, weighing 2,130 kilograms (4,686 pounds), is equipped with 12 wideband channels that allow digital transmission on each at the same time by several video and audio networks.
Users sharing a channel benefit from costs that are lower than they would have to pay for use of landlines or earth stations.
The channels, known as transponders, will add to the 200 India already uses for communication and broadcasting purposes.
Indian direct-to-home television service providers such as Tata Sky and Dish TV are expanding, promising news and entertainment programmes with better picture and sound quality to lure customers away from cable TV operators.
Launched in the 1980s, Insat is the largest domestic communication satellite system in the Asia-Pacific region, providing services in telecommunications, television broadcasting and meteorology including disaster warning.
Sunday's launch will be the fifth for the GSLV, whose predecessor had to be destroyed along with the satellite it was carrying 56 seconds after lift-off in July 2006 when the rocket strayed from its path.
Scientists at the space agency, who blamed a sudden loss of power in one of the rocket's four liquid-propellant motors for the failure, have taken care to ensure the vehicle does not "meet the same fate," the Press Trust of India reported.
"The launch campaign is progressing satisfactorily," said a statement posted on ISRO's web site.
"The satellite has already been integrated with the launch vehicle."
India started its space programme in 1963, developing its own satellites and launch vehicles to reduce dependence on overseas agencies.
It carried out the first successful launch of a domestic satellite, which weighed 35 kilograms (77 pounds), by a home-built rocket in 1980.
After using satellites to map natural resources and predict the weather to help farmers and the rural poor in the early days of the programme, it has moved towards commercial exploitation of space technology.
The country's space agency in April launched an Italian satellite for a fee for the first time, and also earns money from telephone companies and broadcasters who use its transponders.
09/02/2007 02:34 GMT