Isro’s satellite launch fails due to technical glitch

The launch of earth observation satellite EOS-03, aboard the Indian Space Research Organisation ’s (Isro) heavy launch vehicle GSLV, was unsuccessful on Thursday morning when the third stage of the engine did not ignite.

The satellite was meant to be the Indian space agency’s first launch in four months but had been lost, officials aware of the matter said. Had this mission been successful, it would have provided a picture of India’s landmass every 30 minutes for the next ten years.

“Performance of first and second stages was normal. However, Cryogenic Upper Stage ignition did not happen due to technical anomaly. The mission couldn’t be accomplished as intended,” said a statement from the Indian Space Research Organisation.

The failure also represented a setback for what is a crucial part of the space agency’s future rocket engine design using cryogenic propulsion, which is far more complex than solid or liquid systems, but offers significant advantages in thrust and efficiency. The Indian space agency has more or less perfected the science around the solid and liquid propulsion systems, which are in use in the PSLV rockets known as Isro’s workhorse launchers.

The mission using the heavy launch vehicle GSLV lifted off from the country’s only spaceport at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh at the scheduled at 5:43 am on Thursday, which was also the birth anniversary of isro’s first chairperson Dr Vikram Sarabhai.

But the mission ran into trouble at four minutes, 56 seconds after launch when the third stage of the rocket was to ignite. There was silence in the mission control well into the seventh minute after the launch while scientists analysed why the launch vehicle deviated from the charted course, a person aware of what happened at mission control said.

“The outcome of the mission will be announced by ISRO soon. Right now in the mission control, senior scientists are in discussion regarding the performance of the flight,” said an announcement. Later, ISRO chairperson Dr K Sivan announced, “The EOS 3 mission could not be fully accomplished mainly because of a technical anomaly observed in cryogenic stage.”

The mission was significant since this was the first time ISRO was to place an earth observation satellite in a geo-stationary orbit (where the satellite can image the same region throughout the day) instead of a polar orbit that it usually uses. The EOS 3 would have beamed continuous image from over the country, making it an eye in the sky with uses such as in disaster management.

The mission was delayed twice – once in March 2020 when the space agency said that there were technical glitches, and then again in March this year when the second wave of the pandemic hit. This was the second launch of 2021, the previous being a commercial PSLV launch carrying aboard Brazil’s earth observation satellite Amazonia 1.

The Union minister for state for the department of space Dr Jitendra Singh said in a tweet said, “Spoke to Chairman #ISRO, Dr K.Sivan and discussed in detail. The first two stages went off fine, only after that there was a difficulty in cryogenic upper stage ignition. The mission can be re-scheduled some time again.”

The space agency did not clarify whether the minister was referring to the paired satellite or whether the space agency had a backup satellite that could be launched soon.

Experts said the glitch could not have been a major one. “The GSLV has been successfully tested so it is unlikely to be a design flaw. Any major glitch would have been caught during flight countdown like we saw in the case of Chandrayaan-2. It might have been a small problem; it was just unlucky for ISRO,” said Ajay Lele, Senior Fellow working with space security and strategic technologies at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.

The Chandrayaan-2 launch was aborted with less than an hour to go because of a faulty nipple in the cryogenic engine that led to leakage of helium used to pressurise the fuel.

This was, however, the first time the space agency was using a 4-metre ogive or bullet-like shaped payload fairing (the portion up top where the satellite is placed). The same shaped payload fairing is likely to be used for the human spaceflight mission, albeit with a different launch vehicle – the GSLV Mk III. This launch vehicle has proved successful with one sub-orbital flight, two successful developmental flight, and the first operational flight during which it carried Chandrayaan-2 mission.

This was first major failure of the GSLV vehicle since 2010, when two consecutive malfunctions took place, earning the rocket the epithet “naughty boy”. For ISRO, this was the only launch failure since the 2017 PSLV launch when a heat shield that protects the satellite within did not separate. The Hindustan Times