Which Indian Communication satellite, launched in the early 1980s, became the first fully operational satellite of the INSAT series and significantly strengthened India's telecommunication and broadca

Question

Which Indian Communication satellite, launched in the early 1980s, became the first fully operational satellite of the INSAT series and significantly strengthened India's telecommunication and broadcasting services?

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, INSAT-1B (30 August 1983). INSAT-1A, the first satellite of the series, was launched in April 1982 but ran into in-orbit failures and was abandoned within months, so the first fully operational INSAT was INSAT-1B, deployed from the US Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-8 in August 1983. Because INSAT-1B was a multipurpose geostationary satellite carrying telecommunication, television/radio broadcasting and meteorological payloads on a single platform, it drove the mid-1980s expansion of national TV and radio coverage, long-distance telephony and cyclone warning in India.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The date is right — INSAT-1A was launched on 10 April 1982 — but it was the failure of the series, not its workhorse. It developed problems in orbit and was given up within months, so it never became the fully operational satellite the question describes.  (c) IRS-1A was India's first operational remote-sensing (Earth observation) satellite, launched in 1988 from Baikonur. It belongs to the IRS series, not INSAT, and it is not a communication satellite at all.  (d) APPLE (Ariane Passenger Payload Experiment) was India's first experimental geostationary communication satellite, launched by Ariane-1 in June 1981. It was a technology demonstrator that proved India could build and operate a three-axis-stabilised geostationary satellite — it was never an operational INSAT-series satellite.

Concept: INSAT (Indian National Satellite System) is India's multipurpose geostationary satellite system — one platform serving telecommunications, television and radio broadcasting, and meteorology at the same time. It is jointly used by the Department of Space, the Department of Telecommunications, the India Meteorological Department, All India Radio and Doordarshan. Geostationary satellites sit about 36,000 km above the equator and complete one orbit in a day, so they appear fixed in the sky — which is why a dish antenna on the ground can be pointed once and left alone.

State PCS 2026 Q27 — Science & Technology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q27 — Science & Technology PYQ with Answer