SPACE

ISRO ALLAYS FEAR OF SATELLITE DAMAGE DUE TO METEOROID SHOWER

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) says there is a 0.01% to 0.03% chance of the Insat series of satellites being hit by the Leonid meteoroid shower slated to take place between 14 and 20 November. The shower is the debris that will follow in the wake of the comet 55P/Tempel Tuttle.

Isro senior officials said that there was hardly any chance that communications and broadcasting services beamed from the Insat satellites would be affected. India's state-owned broadcaster Doordarshan broadcasts off Insat-1D, Insat-2A, Insat-2B, Insat-2C and Insat 2D.

Nevertheless, they were not taking any chances, the officials said. They would orient the solar panels away from the direction of the comet particles. Also, all but essential services from the satellites will be switched off. Isro said that its engineers along with designers of the various satellite subsystems would keep a constant vigil from the master control facility at Hassan to take corrective measures if any problem occurs.

ARIANESPACE SUCCESSFULLY BLASTS OFF LAUNCHER

Ariane-5, the launcher from the Arianespace stable, made a grand takeoff into space on 21 October 1998, from Kourou in French Guiana. The launcher was on its third test flight and successfully placed a mock satellite called Maqsat 3 in its correct geo-stationary orbital position. Arianespace will now focus on exploiting the launcher commercially.

Arianespace chairman Jean-Marie Luton says: "I would like to pay tribute to the European Space Agency, CNES and all the industrial and operational teams here in French Guiana and in Europe on having successfully completed their programme. With their support, we will now be offering our customers a launch service combining performance, power, flexibility and availability in line with today's commercial demands and those of tomorrow."

INTERSPUTNIK TO FOCUS ON ALLIANCES

Intersputnik says it is going to pursue the establishment of strategic alliances with satellite operators as well as manufacturers of spacecraft, launch vehicles, and ground facilities. These steps, it hopes, will enable it to deploy a modern and efficient satellite-based communications system by 2001.

The Intersputnik system, a press release states, will provide TV, voice / data and multimedia services using transponders on the new-generation Lockheed Martin Intersputnik (LMI) spacecraft series. This will be done along with telecom relay capacity of the modified Russian Express, the European Sesat satellite manufactured by Alcatel of France and Russia's Krasnoyarsk-based NPO PM, and other spacecraft.

All these operations will be brought together in a single system through the cooperation of Russia's RSCC and Informcosmos, U.S. Lockheed Martin and Europe's Eutelsat. Intersputnik, the release says, does not rule out the possibility of establishing strategic alliances with other companies in the future.

The organisation is also getting ready to launch its LMI-1 satellite in the first half of 1999 at an orbital location of 75 degrees east. Intersputnik is hoping to market some of the transponder capacity on the LMI-1 satellite to Indian broadcasting and telecommunications firms. Several Indian broadcasters have used Russian satellites in the past.