26 October 2014: GSAT16 will be launched by French space agency!!!

• Overruling the National Conference government’s reservations, the Election Commission (EC) announced that Jammu and Kashmir, along with Jharkhand, will go to the polls in five phases — on November 25, and December 2, 9, 14 and 20. The counting of votes will take place on December 23 to enable the new governments in the two States to be sworn in before January 3 in Jharkhand and January 19 in Jammu and Kashmir. 
• The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) meeting, chaired by Defence Minister Mr. Arun Jaitley, cleared deals worth Rs. 78,000 crore and made allotments amounting to Rs. 47,000 crore for the three services. The lion’s share went to the Navy. For the Army, a long-pending deal for an anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) system has been cleared.Addressing the council, Mr. Jaitley said the nation’s security was of paramount concern for the government. He added that “necessary hurdles and bottlenecks in procurement process should be addressed expeditiously so that the pace of acquisition is not stymied.” In a major boost to the Navy, a sum of Rs. 19,000 crore has allotted for six conventional diesel-electric submarines under Project-75I.
• 
  
• GSAT-16, the next national communications satellite, reached French Guiana this week and is on its way to the space port near Kourou ahead of an early December flight, European launch service company Arianespace has said. The 3,150-kg satellite is scheduled to be flown on an Ariane-5 launcher numbered Flight VA221. Built at the ISRO Satellite Centre in Bangalore, GSAT-16 was sent on a chartered cargo plane to the French Guiana capital of Cayenne. Over the coming weeks, a team of ISRO engineers will routinely check, test and fully ready it for launch. The satellite carries C-band and Ku-band transponders which will support VSAT (very small aperture terminal) services, television services and emergency communications across the country. The GSAT-16 will be put in orbit along with DIRECTV-14, a satellite that will provide direct-to-home television broadcasts across the U.S. 
• Google executive Alan Eustace broke the sound barrier and set several skydiving records over the southern New Mexico desert early Friday after taking a big leap from the edge of space. Eustace’s supersonic jump was part of a project by Paragon Space Development Corp. and its Stratospheric Explorer team. The technology that has gone into developing the balloon, the spacesuit and the other systems that were used in Friday’s launch will be used to advance commercial space flight, namely efforts by Arizona-based World View Enterprises to take paying tourists up in a high-altitude balloon and luxury capsule starting in late 2016.