News Broadcasting
Insat 4A placed in Intermediate Orbit; govt grants Isro Rs 4 bn for space programmes
BANGALORE: The Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro) telecommunications satellite Insat-4A was placed in an orbit with a perigee (closest point to the earth) of 622 km and apogee (farthest point to earth) of 36,152 km.
Master Control Facility (MCF) at Hassan in Karnataka acquired the first signals at 4:32 am on 22 December and conducted initial phase operations on Insat 4A. The satellite was launched in the early hours of 22 December from Kourou, French Guyana.
Additionally, as per agency reports, Isro has been granted an additional amount of Rs 4 billion by the government in order to provide a boost to the country’s space programme.
The funding for Isro comes in the wake of the organisation preparing for the mission to the moon in the next five years and also plans to launch seven satellites under the new Insat 4 series programme in a span of three years.
On the other hand, the first critical orbit-raising manoeuvre of Insat 4A was conducted at 6:24 am on 23 December when the 440 Newton Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) on board Insat N4A was fired for 85 minutes by commanding the satellite from MCF.
With this LAM firing, Insat 4A perigee has been raised to 13,733 km. The apogee is 36,008 km and the inclination of the orbit with respect to the equatorial plane has been reduced from 4 deg at the time of launch to 0.85 deg now. The orbital period is 15 hours 16 minutes.
All systems on board the satellite are functioning normally. The satellite will go out of MCF visibility at about 1:33 pm and come within its visibility at 7:17 am tomorrow. Further orbit raising maneuvers are planned in the next few days.
News Broadcasting
Senior media executive Madhu Soman exits Zee Media
Former Reuters and Bloomberg leader says he leaves with “no regrets” after brief stint at WION and Zee Business
NOIDA: Madhu Soman, a veteran of global newsrooms and media sales floors, has stepped away from Zee Media Corporation after a short stint steering business strategy for WION and Zee Business.
In a reflective LinkedIn note marking his departure, Soman said his time within the network’s corridors was always likely to be brief. “Some chapters close faster than expected,” he wrote, signalling the end of a nearly two-year spell in which he oversaw both editorial partnerships and commercial strategy.
Soman joined Zee Media in 2022 after more than a decade abroad with Reuters and Bloomberg, returning to India to take on the role of chief business officer for WION and Zee Business. His mandate was ambitious: bridge the newsroom and the revenue desk while expanding digital and broadcast reach.
During the stint, Zee Business reached break-even for the first time since its launch in 2005, while WION refreshed programming and strengthened its digital footprint across platforms such as YouTube and Facebook.
But Soman suggested the cultural fit proved uneasy. Describing himself as a “cultural misfit”, he hinted at deeper tensions between editorial instincts shaped in global newsrooms and the realities of India’s television news ecosystem.
Before joining Zee, Soman spent more than seven years at Bloomberg in Hong Kong as head of broadcast sales for Asia-Pacific, expanding the company’s news syndication business across several markets. Earlier, he held senior editorial roles at Reuters, overseeing online strategy in India and managing Reuters Video Services from London.
His career began in television and wire reporting, including a stint with ANI during the 1999 Kargil conflict, before moving into digital publishing as India’s internet media landscape took shape.
Now, after nearly three decades in broadcast and digital media, Soman is leaving Delhi NCR and returning to his hometown, Trivandrum.
Exhausted, he admits. But unbowed. And with one quiet line that sums up the journey: he didn’t sell his soul — because some things, after all, are not for sale.
