Satellite Broadcasting in Rural India: The SITE Project

Abstract

The Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) was a major NASA applications satellite program for educational TV in India. The project involved the use of NASA’s Application Technology Satellite-6 (ATS-6) to broadcast educational programs directly to television sets placed in different rural clusters. The agreement for SITE was signed between NASA and India’s Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) in 1969. The project was executed from August 1975 to July 1976 and received a great deal of media attention in the country. It was touted as a massive experiment in social engineering and was hailed by some enthusiasts as the world’s largest sociological experiment.1 The British science writer Arthur C. Clarke called it the “greatest communications experiment in history.”2KeywordsEarth StationGeosynchronous SatelliteGround SegmentTelevision ReceiverWeapon ProgramThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.