Second PSLV Project Failure For ISRO Due to Issues With Rocket's Third Stage

That Monday's PSLV-C62 and the May 18 PSLV-C61 projects failed for this reason suggest that the mistake “could be on the quality assurance side”, The Hindu noted in an editorial.

The Wire Staff

That Monday's PSLV-C62 and the May 18 PSLV-C61 projects failed for this reason suggest that the mistake “could be on the quality assurance side”, The Hindu noted in an editorial.

second pslv project failure for isro due to issues with rocket s third stage

A visual tracks the progress of ISRO's PSLV-C62 mission shortly before an anomaly in the vehicle's third stage causes it to fail. Photo: Screenshot from YouTube/ISRO Official.

New Delhi: ISRO experienced its second Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) failure in a row with its PSLV-C62 rocket suffering a disturbance in its third ‘stage’ or segment minutes after liftoff on Monday (January 12).

Its PSLV-C61 rocket too had failed after liftoff on May 18 last year due to an issue in its third, PS3 stage.

After the PSLV-C62 took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the southern Andhra coast on Monday, ISRO announced that the mission “encountered an anomaly during end of the PS3 stage”. “A detailed analysis has been initiated,” it said, not elaborating.

Disturbances in the rocket's roll rate, which relates to how fast it spins around its vertical axis, had caused it to deviate from its expected path, ISRO chairman V. Narayanan said.

The 44.4 metre-long rocket was carrying 16 satellites as part of the mission, among them the EOS-N1 earth observation satellite developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation.

Others included satellites with applications in AI, agricultural data collection, fishing vessel rescue and in-orbit refuelling.

Following the May incident a Failure Analysis Committee (FAC) was constituted to study what had gone wrong and was set to submit its report to the Prime Minister's Office. However, its contents have not been made public, prompting some to raise difficult questions over the two projects relying on a rocket otherwise considered to be ISRO's ‘workhorse’.

That both the C61 and C62 missions failed due to problems with their third stage – which involves a technologically mature solid fuel motor – suggests that “the mistakes that sank [the] two PSLV launches could be on the quality assurance side”, or that “at least these are not likely to be isolated anomalies”, The Hindu's editorial on Tuesday said, advocating for the FAC's report on the May mission to be made public.

In another article, the newspaper's Vasudevan Mukunth wrote that the government's decision not to publicise the FAC's findings allowed ISRO to “[avoid] external checks of its ‘return to flight’ criteria”, which he noted “will be under greater scrutiny now, including to consider whether ISRO implemented a superficial fix”.

This article went live on January fourteenth, two thousand twenty six, at thirty-three minutes past four at night.

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