In the second orbit raising manoeuvre conducted at 12:47 [IST] today (March 14, 2007), the Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) on board INSAT-4B was fired for 41 minutes by commanding the satellite from Master Control Facility (MCF), Hassan. With this LAM firing, INSAT-4B perigee (closest point to earth) has been raised to 32,878 km. The apogee (farthest point to earth) height remains at 35,736 km. The inclination of orbit with respect to the equatorial plane has been reduced to 0.19 deg. INSAT-4B now has an orbital period of 22 hours 41 minutes. The satellite will now be in the continuous radio visibility of MCF-Hassan.

INSAT-4B was launched by the European Ariane-5 launch vehicle on March 12, 2007 from Kourou, French Guyana. The launch vehicle had placed INSAT-4B in an orbit with a perigee of 250 km and apogee of 35,886 km with an inclination of 4.5 deg with respect to the equatorial plane. With the first orbit raising manoeuvre carried out from MCF, Hassan yesterday (March 13, 2007), INSAT-4B had been put in an intermediate orbit of 14,244 km perigee and 35,752 km apogee and the orbital inclination had been reduced to 1.15 degree with respect to the equatorial plane.

INSAT-4B came within the radio visibility of MCF this morning at 06:13 am (IST) and all the necessary operations like earth acquisition and gyro calibration were carried out before the second orbit raising manoeuvre was started.

The next orbit manoeuvre to place INSAT-4B in near Geosynchronous Orbit is planned on March 16, 2007. Deployment of the two solar panels and the two antennas will be carried out subsequently.