The pivotal role of education as an instrument of social change by altering the human perspective and transforming the traditional mindset of society is well recognised. The universalisation of education has become the top priority, especially for the developing countries. But the extension of quality education to remote and rural regions becomes a Herculean task for a large country like India with multi-lingual and multi-cultural population separated by vast geographical distances, and, in many instances, inaccessible terrain. Since independence, India has seen substantial increase in the number of educational institutions at primary, secondary and higher levels as well as the student enrolment. But the lack of adequate rural educational infrastructure and non-availability of good teachers in sufficient numbers adversely affect the efforts made in education.

Satellites can establish the connectivity between urban educational institutions with adequate infrastructure imparting quality education and the large number of rural and semi-urban educational institutions that lack the necessary infrastructure. Besides supporting formal education, a satellite system can facilitate the dissemination of knowledge to the rural and remote population about important aspects like health, hygiene and personality development and allow professionals to update their knowledge base as well. Thus, in spite of limited trained and skilled teachers, the aspirations of the growing student population at all levels can be met through the concept of tele-education. The concept of beaming educational programmes through satellites was effectively demonstrated for the first time in India in 1975-76 through the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) conducted using the American Application Technology Satellite (ATS-6). During this unique experiment, which is hailed as the largest sociological experiment conducted anywhere in the world, programmes pertaining to health, hygiene and family planning were telecast directly to about 2,400 Indian villages spread over six states. Later, with the commissioning of INSAT system in 1983, a variety of educational programmes is being telecast. In the 90s, Jhabua Developmental Communications Project (JDCP) and Training and Developmental Communication Channel (TDCC) further demonstrated the efficacy of tele-education.With the success of the INSAT based educational services, a need was felt to launch a satellite dedicated for educational service and ISRO conceived the EDUSAT Project in October 2002.

EDUSAT is the first exclusive satellite for serving the educational sector. It is specially configured for audio-visual medium, employing digital interactive classroom and multimedia multicentric system. The satellite will have multiple regional beams covering different parts of India — five Ku-band transponders with spot beams covering northern, north-eastern, eastern, southern and western regions of the country, a Ku-band transponder with its footprint covering the Indian mainland region and six C-band transponders with their footprints covering the entire country.

EDUSAT is primarily meant for providing connectivity to school, college and higher levels of education and also to support non-formal education including developmental communication. The scope of the EDUSAT programme is planned to be realised in three phases.

In the first phase of pilot projects, a Ku-band transponder on board INSAT-3B, which is already in orbit, is being used. In this phase, Visveswaraiah Technological University (VTU) in Karnataka, Y B Chavan State Open University in Maharashtra and the Rajiv Gandhi Technical University in Madhya Pradesh are covered. In the second phase, EDUSAT spacecraft, once commissioned in orbit, will be used in a semi-operational mode with at least one uplink in each of the five spot beams. About 100-200 classrooms will be connected in each beam. Coverage will be extended to two more states and one national institution. In the third phase, EDUSAT network is expected to become fully operational. ISRO will provide technical and managerial support in the replication of EDUSAT ground systems to manufacturers and service providers. End users are expected to provide funds for this. In this phase, ground infrastructure to meet the country’s educational needs will be built and during this period, EDUSAT will be able to support about 25 to 30 uplinks and about 5000 remote terminals per uplink.

While ISRO will provide the space segment for EDUSAT System and demonstrate the efficacy of the satellite system for interactive distance education, content generation is the responsibility of the user agencies. The quantity and quality of the content would ultimately decide the success of EDUSAT System. This involves an enormous effort by the user agencies. To help in this, ISRO, in cooperation with the user agencies, has already organised five conferences at the regional level, one at the national level and one conference of vice-chancellors of Indian universities to create awareness about the EDUSAT and its capabilities. The latest conference at Bangalore was jointly organised by ISRO and the Association of Indian Universities
in July 2004.

The indigenous realisation and launch of EDUSAT will provide a substantial boost to countrywide distance education in India.