GSAT-18 is an Indian communications satellite. Built by

ISRO The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO; ) is the national space agency of India, headquartered in Bengaluru. It operates under the Department of Space (DOS) which is directly overseen by the Prime Minister of India, while the Chairman o ...

and operated by INSAT, it carries 24 C-band, 12 extended C-band, and 12 K_u-band transponders. The satellite was launched on 5 October 2016 at approximately 20:30 UTC aboard an

Ariane 5 ECA Ariane 5 is a European heavy-lift space launch vehicle developed and operated by Arianespace for the European Space Agency (ESA). It is launched from the Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG) in French Guiana. It has been used to deliver payloads into ...

rocket from the

Guiana Space Centre The Guiana Space Centre (french: links=no, Centre spatial guyanais; CSG), also called Europe's Spaceport, is a European spaceport to the northwest of Kourou in French Guiana, a region of France in South America. Kourou is located approximatel ...

Kourou Kourou () is a commune in French Guiana, an overseas region and department of France in South America. Kourou is famous for being the location of the Guiana Space Centre, the main spaceport of France and the European Space Agency (ESA). It i ...

, French Guiana. The launch vehicle inserted the satellite into a

geosynchronous transfer orbit A geosynchronous transfer orbit or geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) is a type of geocentric orbit. Satellites that are destined for geosynchronous (GSO) or geostationary orbit (GEO) are (almost) always put into a GTO as an intermediate step f ...

, and once in service it will occupy the orbital slot at 74° East longitude. The total cost of the satellite and launch services was about . GSAT-18 was originally scheduled to launch on 12 July 2016 alongside Japan's

Superbird-8 Superbird-B3, known as Superbird-8 before launch, and DSN-1 (Kirameki-1) for its military payload, is a geostationary communications satellite operated by SKY Perfect JSAT Group and designed and manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric on the DS200 ...

satellite, but a shipping mishap which damaged Superbird-8 forced a delay in the launch schedule.

Arianespace Arianespace SA is a French company founded in 1980 as the world's first commercial launch service provider. It undertakes the operation and marketing of the Ariane programme. The company offers a number of different launch vehicles: the heavy ...

later paired GSAT-18 with Australia's Sky Muster II for a 4 October 2016 launch. The launch was delayed 24 hours to 5 October due to excessively high

crosswind A crosswind is any wind that has a perpendicular component to the line or direction of travel. This affects the aerodynamics of many forms of transport. Moving non-parallel to the wind's direction creates a crosswind component on the object and th ...

s at the launch site.

Orbit raising and station keeping

Orbit raising operations were made using an on-board LAM and chemical thrusters to place the satellite in the intended geostationary orbital slot.

References

{{Orbital launches in 2016 GSAT satellites Spacecraft launched by India in 2016 Ariane commercial payloads