GSAT-18 is an Indian communications satellite. Built by

ISRO The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO ) is India's national space agency, headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka. It serves as the principal research and development arm of the Department of Space (DoS), overseen by the Prime Minister o ...

and operated by

INSAT The Indian National Satellite System or INSAT, is a series of multipurpose geostationary satellites launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to satisfy telecommunications, broadcasting, meteorology, and search and rescue ope ...

, it carries 24 C-band, 12 extended C-band, and 12 K_u-band transponders.As of 2025, 6 transponders in the spacecraft are kept in idle, as

GSAT-14 GSAT-14 is an Indian communications satellite launched in January 2014. It replaced the GSAT-3 satellite, which was launched in 2004. GSAT-14 was launched by a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk.II, which incorporated an Indian-built cry ...

covers their spectrum.they are expected to be online in early 2027. The satellite was launched on 5 October 2016 at approximately 20:30

UTC Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...

aboard an

Ariane 5 ECA Ariane 5 is a retired European Heavy-lift launch vehicle, heavy-lift space launch vehicle operated by Arianespace for the European Space Agency (ESA). It was launched from the Guiana Space Centre (CSG) in French Guiana. It was used to deliver p ...

rocket from the

Guiana Space Centre The Guiana Space Centre (; CSG), also called Europe's Spaceport, is a spaceport to the northwest of Kourou in French Guiana, an Overseas departments and regions of France, overseas region of France in South America. Kourou is located approxim ...

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 ...

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

geosynchronous transfer orbit In space mission design, a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) or geosynchronous transfer orbit is a highly elliptical type of geocentric orbit, usually with a perigee as low as low Earth orbit (LEO) and an apogee as high as geostationary orbit ...

, 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 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 March 1980 as the world's first commercial launch service provider. It operates two launch vehicles: Vega C, a Small-lift launch vehicle, small-lift rocket, and Ariane 6, a Medium-lift launch vehicl ...

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 direction creates a crosswind component on the object and t ...

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