An Indian rocket failed during the third stage of its flight within minutes of launch on Monday, resulting in the loss of 16 satellites and marking a second consecutive failure of what the country’s space agency calls its trusted workhorse.
The four-stage Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) lifted off successfully from the Sriharikota island spaceport off the Andhra Pradesh coast but experienced an anomaly about six minutes later while it was about 328km over the Indian Ocean just off Sri Lanka.
“The performance of the vehicle up to the third stage was as expected — and as predicted,” said V. Narayanan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isr00o). “But close to the end of the third stage, we’re seeing a disturbance in the vehicle. There was a deviation on the part of the vehicle.”
The flight “encountered an anomaly” during the end of the rocket’s third stage operations, Isro also said in a post on X. The agency also said it was analysing all data from ground stations to determine what exactly went wrong.
Monday’s launch — the 64th flight of the PSLV — was intended to ferry into orbit an Earth observation satellite from the Defence Research and Development Organisation for surveillance applications and 15 piggybacking satellites from customers in India, Brazil, France, Spain, Thailand and the UK.
The PSLV, declared by Isro as an operational rocket in 1996, has launched more than 300 satellites, including dozens for foreign customers, since 1999. The rocket had failed only thrice — its maiden flight in 1993, another flight in 2017, and its 63rd flight in May last year.
The PSLV’s 63rd flight had also failed during the rocket’s third stage, prompting an investigation by Isro to determine the cause and make corrections if needed. Narayanan had at the time said initial data had indicated “a fall in the chamber pressure in the motor case”.
Space sector experts say Monday’s failure, also attributed to a performance deviation during the rocket’s third stage operation, was likely to raise questions whether Isro had appropriately addressed and rectified whatever malfunction had led to the mission failure last year.
The first and third stages of the PSLV rocket are fuelled by solid propellants, while the second and fourth stages
are fuelled by liquid propellants.
The space agency has not detailed in public the outcome of the previous investigation and any corrective measures taken. Failures in proven rockets such as the PSLV can emerge from even the tiniest of components among the thousands that go into the rocket. Phone queries to the space agency on Monday did not evoke a response.
The setbacks come at a time Isro is pursuing bigger ideas, including a human spaceflight mission aboard an Indian-built space capsule in 2027, an Indian-built space station by 2035, and a plan to land astronauts on the moon by 2040.
Besides the Indian Earth observation satellite, PSLV C62 also carried multiple prototype satellites for applications — some built by university students — ranging from in-orbit fuelling and collecting crop data to re-entry and rescuing fishing vessels in distress.