MCF director S Rangarajan was not available for comment. But the spokesman clarified that the premature termination of the manoeuvre ``wasn't because of a technical snag'' in the satellite. An ISRO press release described everything as ``normal''.

``Insat-2E went out of the MCF's visibility and the scientists had to stop firing to preserve the fuel on board the satellite,'' he said.

The ISRO-built satellite was put yesterday by the Ariane rocket in an elliptical ``transfer'' orbit that brought Insat-2E to a distance of 250 km from one side of the earth (perigee) and 36,100 km from the other side (apogee).

Today's operation by MCFf was the first of two or three manoeuvres intended to push the perigee from250 km to 36,000 km to make the orbit circular which is ideal for Insat-2E. The orbit raising is done by firing the on-board liquid apogee motor (LAM) at the time when Insat-2E is at the apogee and visible to the radars at Hassan.

But the LAM firing at 5.50 am on Sunday was terminated prematurely at only 16 minutes instead of 75 minutes as intended. As a result, the satellite perigee was pushed to only 2,000 km. Had LAM firing continued for 75 minutes, Insat-2E would have gained a height of about 20,000 km.