The master control facility at Hasan in Karnataka will take control of the satellite less than 30 minutes after Ariane's lift-off, R Rangarajan, Insat mission director at Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), said.The satellite will be co-located at 83 degrees east longitude along with Insat-1D, said Rangarajan, adding that satellite costs Rs 220 crore, with Ariane charging $68 million for the launch.

Giving details of the satellite's status, which arrived at the launch base in Kourou on February 15, Laumonier said that ISRO scientists are testing all equipment on-board the satellite and have deployed the east-west antennae to check alignment and performance.

Later this week, thermalprotection and dry weighing tests will be conducted by the ISRO team, following which fuelling operations will begin by March 16. The satellite will be integrated with the rocket on March 25, Laumonier said.

Last month, the ISRO team had completed a "fitcheck" to ensure that the satellite was fitting perfectly with the Ariane rocket adapter. Checks on the craft and its alignment are complete and the solar array was also tested and deployed last week, he added.

Rangarajan said Insat-2E has been designed for a life of 12 years, extendable up to 15 years. The spacecraft, billed as India's most advanced satellite till date, carries several features. It will provide broadcast coverage extending from western Europe to Australia in the extended C-band range, with an uplink frequency of 6450-6650 megahertz (mhz) and downlink frequency of 3425-3625 mhz.

In addition, the satellite is carrying a water vapour channel payload to give data on the number of rain-bearing clouds, which will help the Indianmeteorological department in estimating and predicting rainfall.The satellite also carries a charged coupled device (CCD) camera, hitherto present only on the Indian remote sensing (IRS) satellites, to provide pictures with ground resolution of one km by one km, Rangarajan added.Insat-2E, the last of the second-generation Insat satellites to be built by ISRO, is a multi-purpose satellite for telecommunication, television broadcasting and meteorological services, Rangarajan said.

It carries 17 transponders, nine of which will be leased to the International Telecommunications Satellite (IntelSat) Organisation. IntelSat will pay ISRO $100 million over a 10-year period for lease of these transponders, he said. This time, Insat-2E will be the sole spacecraft to be put into orbit by Ariane on April 3 at Kouou, in what is being described as a "dedicated launch". Usually, Ariane launches two satellites at a time, Rangarajan said.

ISRO is also preparing itself for launching its next satellite -- Insat-3B -- inSeptember this year by Ariane rocket, he said. Insat-3B is designed to compensate for loss of telecom services due to a power failure on board Insat-2D in 1997, which crippled the satellite and led to its eventual abandonment, Rangarajan said.