The science editor of The Hindu says that the January 12 failure of ISRO’s PSLV rocket is a major setback and a very big blow to the organisation. He agrees that it raises worrying questions about the reliability of the PSLV rocket which is ISRO’s workhorse.

In an interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, Mukunth raised questions about the functioning of ISRO chairman V. Narayanan and ISRO’s lack of transparency during his tenure. He made this point in connection with the fact that this is the second successive back-to-back PSLV rocket failure. The earlier one was in May 2025. On both occasions the problem occurred during the third stage of the flight when the rocket was attempting to get into orbit around the earth. However, the Failure Analysis Committee investigation report into the May 2025 failure has not been made public. It was submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office but has not been released from there. This means that independent experts have not been able to review and analyse the findings. In turn, that has led to questions being asked whether there is something in the failure analysis report that is being hidden from the Indian public.

As Mukunth put it: “The people who are responsible are the people who head ISRO, the Department of Space and the Prime Minister’s Office.”

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