ISRO Satellite Launch Failed: In a rare failure, India’s main rocket PSLV developed problems a few minutes after take-off and failed to place earth observation satellite EOS-09 into the intended orbit in an early morning launch on Sunday. It was not immediately clear what caused the failure of the flight. In a short statement, ISRO said the problem was observed in the third stage but did not give any details. “Today’s 101st launch was attempted. PSLV-C61 performance was normal till second stage. Due to an observation in the third stage, the mission could not be accomplished,” ISRO said. This was the 101st mission launched by ISRO, and the 63rd one using the PSLV rocket, which is the most successful launch vehicle developed by India’s space agency. PSLV has failed on only two earlier occasions, the first time during its inaugural flight in 1993 and then in 2017 when the C-39 mission had been unsuccessful. For this reason, the failure of this mission has come as a big disappointment. “Heartbreaking to see a failure in PSLV today. I still remember my time at ISRO and how shaken we were when PSLV-C39 failed in 2017 after more than two decades of successful flights. It’s a powerful reminder of how complex and unforgiving spaceflight can be, even for proven workhorses like PSLV,” said Pawan Kumar Chandana of Skyroot, a private space company that is developing its own launch vehicles. Sunday’s launch involved the XL-version of PSLV which was on its 27th flight. This rocket has four stages. Around six minutes after the lift-off, after the third stage of the rocket took over, the launch trajectory started deviating from the calculated trajectory. The altitude of the vehicle was lower than what it should be. After the first signs of trouble, the graphics and sound for the live video was cut-off. It was later announced that the outcome of the mission will be communicated by the space agency later. Members of the parliamentary committee on science and technology were present at Sriharikota for the launch. This is the second back-to-back failure for the space agency after its GSLV could not place NVS-02 satellite in the correct orbit during the space agency’s 100th mission. After being placed in an incorrect elliptical orbit, the space agency started looking for alternative ways to utilise NVS-02 that has a mission life of 15 years. Both failures took place in the term of the new ISRO chief V Narayanan. This was also the second mission, after December’s Spadex launch, where the PSLV was integrated at the newly built Payload Integration Facility (PIF) instead of the launch pad. The facility was designed to free-up launch pad while a mission was being put together in order to increase the frequency of launches. The space agency was to put the 1,700-kg earth observation satellite at an altitude of about 597 km in a sun-synchronous polar orbit — meaning the satellite was to pass over a given place at the same time every day. The EOS-09 satellite carried a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) payload, capable of providing images of the earth in all weather conditions.The satellite was meant to work in tandem with the EOS-04 satellite launched in 2022, ensuring seamless continuity and increasing the observation frequency. Importantly, in order to ensure a debris-free mission, the space agency had put on the satellite some fuel reserved for de-orbiting manoeuvre after the end of its life so that it would fall into the earth’s and burn up within two years. The last stage of the rocket was also supposed to be lowered and de-fuelled in a similar manner. International guidelines recommend that stored fuel be removed from spacecrafts or upper stages of launch vehicles to ensure that there are no accidents that break up the satellite in space and create more debris.
