CMS-02 (GSAT-24)

CMS-02, catalogued under the designator GSAT-24 and internationally identified as 2022-067A (NORAD ID: 52903), is an Indian geostationary communications satellite built by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and operated by NewSpace India Limited (NSIL). Launched in June 2022 aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from the Guiana Space Centre, the spacecraft represents a significant milestone in India's evolving commercial space sector — specifically in the growing role of NSIL as a demand-driven satellite operator leasing capacity to the private sector. The satellite remains operational in geostationary orbit as of the time of writing.

Mission and Purpose

CMS-02 was conceived and executed as a purely commercial communications satellite, with its entire on-board transponder capacity contracted to the direct-to-home television provider Tata Play. This arrangement marks a notable shift in how Indian government-backed space entities interact with private industry: rather than the satellite serving a broad public mandate under the Department of Space, NSIL functions here as a commercial lessor, with the spacecraft's utility defined almost entirely by its downstream agreement with a single corporate customer.

Tata Play, one of India's leading DTH television service providers, relies on the satellite's capacity to deliver broadcast services to subscribers across the subcontinent. The satellite's geostationary position — effectively fixed in the sky relative to ground receivers — makes it well-suited for this kind of wide-area broadcast application. Dishes pointed at a fixed celestial position can reliably receive signals without the need for tracking hardware, which is a considerable practical advantage for consumer DTH infrastructure deployed at millions of homes.

The spacecraft was funded, owned, and operated by NSIL at a cost of approximately ₹400 crore, making it one of the more commercially structured procurements in Indian space history. Prior to the formal establishment of NSIL as a commercial arm of ISRO, Indian communication satellites were typically operated under ISRO itself or the Antrix Corporation, largely for government and quasi-government customers. CMS-02/GSAT-24 reflects a deliberate policy decision to have NSIL pursue demand-driven missions where private sector requirements guide satellite design and capacity planning from the outset.

The satellite's mission type is not further specified in publicly available tracking catalogs, and its detailed operational status is not formally disclosed in the open literature. However, the commercial context of the Tata Play lease arrangement provides a clear functional picture of its primary role.

Orbit and Tracking

CMS-02 occupies a geostationary orbit — a circular orbit approximately 35,786 kilometres above Earth's equator where a satellite's orbital period matches the planet's rotation, causing it to appear stationary over a fixed ground point. The satellite's tracked orbital parameters confirm this placement precisely: its apogee stands at 35,802 km, and its perigee at 35,788 km, yielding an extremely circular orbit with negligible eccentricity. The orbital inclination is recorded at 0.0°, consistent with a textbook equatorial geostationary position. The orbital period is 1,436.2 minutes — just over 23 hours and 56 minutes — which corresponds closely to one sidereal day, the fundamental characteristic that underpins the geostationary effect.

The tight match between apogee and perigee (a difference of only 14 km across an orbit that spans tens of thousands of kilometres) indicates that the spacecraft has been successfully placed into a well-maintained operational slot, with station-keeping manoeuvres routinely performed by the operations team to counteract perturbations from solar radiation pressure, lunar and solar gravity, and other forces that would otherwise cause the satellite to drift and its inclination to grow over time.

Because geostationary satellites are at such extreme altitudes and appear fixed in the sky, they are not typically targets for casual optical observation in the way that low Earth orbit objects are. CMS-02 does not present a favourable target for amateur satellite spotters; it is essentially a stationary point of faint reflected light, unresolvable to the naked eye and not producing visible passes across the sky. Tracking software and catalogs list it, but operationally it simply sits at its designated longitude, invisible to all but sensitive optical or radio instruments.

The satellite was catalogued by the United States Space Surveillance Network following its launch, assigned NORAD ID 52903, and has been tracked continuously as part of the global catalog of Earth-orbiting objects. Its geostationary class designation in the catalog reflects both its orbital altitude and its near-zero inclination.

Design and Operator

CMS-02 was designed and manufactured by ISRO, India's principal space agency, which has built a substantial heritage in geostationary communications satellite construction through its GSAT series. The spacecraft has a launch mass of 4,181 kg, placing it in the heavyweight category of geostationary satellites. Satellites of this mass class typically carry substantial power generation capacity and a significant complement of transponders across various frequency bands, though the specific payload configuration of CMS-02 has not been detailed in publicly available tracking records.

ISRO's satellite manufacturing capabilities, developed over decades beginning with the organisation's earliest experimental programs, have matured to the point where spacecraft of this scale are produced domestically with a high degree of indigenisation. The GSAT series — of which CMS-02/GSAT-24 is a part — has served as the primary vehicle through which India has built its geostationary communications infrastructure, supporting everything from government networks to educational broadcasting and, increasingly, commercial services.

NewSpace India Limited, the operator of CMS-02, was established under the Department of Space to serve as a commercial entity capable of entering into contracts, leasing satellite capacity, and engaging with industry in ways that a purely governmental body like ISRO cannot. NSIL operates on a demand-driven model, meaning that rather than building satellites speculatively and seeking customers afterwards, the organisation is meant to identify and confirm commercial demand before commissioning spacecraft. The GSAT-24 program fits this model closely: with Tata Play's capacity requirements identified in advance, NSIL commissioned ISRO to build the satellite to meet those needs, then leased all available capacity upon launch.

The choice of Ariane 5 as the launch vehicle reflects a pragmatic procurement decision. While India has its own launch vehicle infrastructure under ISRO — including the workhorse PSLV and the more powerful GSLV series — the Ariane 5, operated by Arianespace from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana, offered the proven heavy-lift capability required to place a satellite of CMS-02's mass directly into a geostationary transfer orbit. The satellite was launched on 21 June 2022, with liftoff occurring in the evening hours Eastern Daylight Time.

Significance and Current Status

The CMS-02/GSAT-24 program occupies a particular place in the broader narrative of Indian space commercialisation. It represents one of the clearest examples to date of NSIL functioning as intended — not as a government broadcaster or a research platform, but as a commercial satellite operator in the conventional sense, financing and deploying infrastructure for a private-sector lessee.

For Tata Play, the satellite provides continuity and expanded capacity for DTH services across India, a market with enormous reach and ongoing demand driven by the country's large and geographically dispersed population. The DTH sector in India has grown substantially over the past two decades, and the availability of dedicated geostationary capacity leased directly from a domestic operator reduces reliance on foreign satellite providers for critical broadcast infrastructure.

From ISRO's perspective, CMS-02 demonstrates that the organisation's manufacturing base can satisfy commercially structured requirements at competitive specifications, not only governmental or scientific missions. The satellite's successful commissioning adds to ISRO's track record in the heavy geostationary satellite category and reinforces the credibility of NSIL as a procurement and operational entity.

The satellite remains in orbit and, based on its stable geostationary position, continues to operate in its commercial DTH role. No reentry or decay is anticipated in the near term; geostationary satellites at end-of-life are typically manoeuvred into a graveyard orbit several hundred kilometres above the geostationary belt, where they remain indefinitely without posing a conjunction hazard to operational spacecraft. CMS-02's long-term orbital future, like that of virtually all geostationary assets, will follow this established disposal convention when the time comes. For now, however, it continues to serve as a fixed node in India's communications satellite infrastructure, quietly relaying television signals to millions of receivers below.