Question

Where is Arvi earth station for satellite communication situated?
A. Uttar Pradesh
B. Tamil Nadu
C. Maharashtra
D. Gujarat

Answer 1

Hint: The Arvi Satellite Communication Earth Station completed one successful year of operation on 26 February 1972. The performance was the most impressive and had a system reliability of $99.9\mathrm{\%}$. The station now carries more than $90\mathrm{\%}$ of the overseas communication traffic of India.

Complete answer:Arvi is a village about 80 km north of Poona city and the Earth station site is approximately 92 hectares (230) acres) in area. It is surrounded by picturesque hills of the Sahyadri range in the Deccan plateau which provides a natural shielding effect minimizing interference from other terrestrial microwave systems. At the early planning stage of the project, during 1967-68, when the question of assigning the entire project as a turn-key job to a foreign firm was being discussed, the late Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, who was then Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, insisted on the entire work being engineered by the Indian team. The Arvi Satellite Communication Project Board of Management was constituted with the author as Chairman and Project Administrator and four other members. The Project Board was vested with full authority to give decisions on all administrative, financial, and technical matters arising in connection with the execution of the project. Consequently, the project organization had a fast response time. Part of the sophisticated electronic equipment and sub-systems had necessarily to be imported and financial assistance to meet these imports was extended by way of a loan of Canadian $\mathrm{\$}4.0$ million on easy terms of payment under the agency of the Canadian International Development Aid (CIDA). This Arvi earth station for satellite communication is situated in Gujarat.

Thus, option (D) is correct.

Note:The major sub-systems of the project were: antenna sub-system; servo control and drive system; radiofrequency sub-system; ground communication equipment; multiplex sub-system; civil engineering; air conditioning and power supply systems; system engineering, installation, testing, commissioning, etc. $$