Chennai: Giving a boost Indian Air Force’s network-centric warfare (NCW) capabilities, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Wednesday successfully launched the communication satellite GSAT-7A from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota.

The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-F11) lifted off as per the scrip at 4.10 pm from the Second Launch Pad of SDSC with GSAT-7A weighing 2250 kg. Today’s was the 13th flight of GSLV-MkII.

About 19 minutes after the lift-off, the GSAT-7A was injected into a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO), as planned. The 26-hour countdown for the launch of GSAT-7A had begun at 2.10 pm on Tuesday.

ISRO's Master Control Facility (MCF) at Hassan in Karnataka will now take over the control of the satellite in addition to monitoring its trajectory.

The satellite will be finally home at its intended orbit in a few days after the completion of various orbit raising manoeuvres. It was ISRO’s 7th mission from Sriharikota this year.

GSLV has three stages with the four liquid strap-ons and a solid rocket motor at the core form the first stage. The second stage has a high thrust engine using liquid fuel, while the third and final stage consists of the cryogenic upper stage.

GSAT-7A will provide services to the users in Ku-band over the Indian region. The signals from the satellite will aid various missions of IAF. The signals can be picked by drones, fighters, radar stations and various air bases.

Indian Navy has a dedicated satellite Rukmini (GSAT-7), in operation since 2013. With the successful launch of GSAT-7A, ISRO has signed off year 2018 on a positive note.

“We have had a very successful year and the launch of GSAT-7A will add more colour to the list of achievements this year. Our focus will now shift to more challenging Chandrayaan-2 mission,” said ISRO Chairman Dr Sivan.

Post launch, Dr Sivan said that it was the third successful mission of the ISRO in 35 days from Sriharikota.

“Today’s mission has many firsts and we are delighted that the GSAT-7A has been placed into the super synchronous transfer orbit. This is the heaviest satellite lifted by GSLV with indigenous cryogenic stage. We have increased the capacity of second stage from 37.5 tonnes to 40 tonne and third stage from 12 to 15 tonne. Among the new technologies are a Gregorian Antenna to improve the performance,” Dr Sivan said.

R Umamaheswaran, Scientific Secretary, ISRO, congratulated various teams across centres which worked for this mission.

“We have been locked on to our missions all the time. Today yet again we have proved that nothing matters to us than our missions. There are bigger challenges awaiting us in 2019 and we have geared up for them,” Umamaheswaran said.