India launches its first ‘military’ satellite

Bangalore (IANS) India’s first ‘military’ satellite (GSAT-7) was successfully put into the geosynchronous transfer orbit early Friday by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) heavy rocket.

It was launched in the early hours from its spaceport at Kourou in French Guiana off the Pacific coast.

“The advanced multi-band communication satellite was deployed in the transfer orbit, around 36,000 km from above the earth, by the Ariane-5 rocket of the ESA’s Arianespace 34 minutes after its lift-off at 2 a.m. IST,” the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement here.

The Indian space agency’s Master Control Facility (MCF) at Hassan, about 180 km from Bangalore, acquired signals from the 2.5-tonne dedicated spacecraft five minutes before it was separated from the rocket.