Feature story
Arianespace and India mark 25 years of cooperation and dual satellite missions
June 16, 2006
A quarter-century of Ariane missions for India was celebrated today at a symposium that also highlighted 25 years of Arianespace's dual satellite flights – a capability which has become a trademark of the company's commercial launch services.
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The symposium, held in Paris, brought together top officials of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Arianespace and France's CNES national space agency, along with satellite industry executives, scientists and researchers.
Ariane's first launch with an Indian satellite occurred on June 19, 1981, when ISRO's Apple experimental communications spacecraft was orbited from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana aboard an Ariane 1 vehicle.
In addition to Apple – which had a liftoff weight of 670 kg. – this third flight of an Ariane launcher also carried Europe's Meteosat metrological satellite, which weighed in at 649 kg. (See image, at right).
The perfect launch deployed Apple and Meteosat 2 on a 200 km. X 35,785 km. orbit, marking the world's first dual launch into geostationary transfer orbit. Since then, such dual missions have been repeated many times by Arianespace, providing the company with significant flexibility in meeting customer launch scheduling needs.
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During a press conference prior to today's symposium, Arianespace CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall noted that Arianespace has signed a total of 13 contracts with ISRO for satellite launches on Ariane, with the next of these slated for an Ariane 5 mission in the first quarter of 2007. This upcoming payload will be INSAT 4B, which will weigh more than 3,000 kg., and is part of the largest satellite communications systems in the Asia-Pacific region.
"ISRO and India have been very important customers since the launch of Apple on Ariane's no. 3 flight in 1981, and we continue our cooperation today, when more than 170 Ariane missions have been performed," Le Gall told journalists at the press conference.
This cooperation also includes Arianespace's recent signature of a launch contract to orbit the W2M satellite for the European telecommunications operator Eutelsat. W2M will be built by a new consortium of India's Antrix and Europe's Astrium Satellites – which proposes a relay platform built by ISRO and outfitted with a payload supplied by Astrium Satellites.
"We were selected to launch W2M because it is part of the INSAT 4 family, which has been fully proven for launch on Ariane," Le Gall added.
The most recent Ariane launch that carried an Indian spacecraft was last December. As with the milestone Ariane 1 mission in 1981, this flight also brought together an ISRO telecommunications spacecraft with a European meteorological satellite in a dual-payload configuration. The December 21, 2005 mission of an Ariane 5 lofted the INSAT 4A satellite with the MSG-2 second-generation Meteosat platform. INSAT 4A had a liftoff mass of approximately 3,200 kg., while MSG-2 weighed 2,034 kg. at launch.
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