New Delhi: India’s bid to enhance its remote sensing capabilities suffered a setback early Sunday morning when an Earth-observation satellite was lost following a launch failure from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched its EOS-09 satellite aboard a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) on Saturday at 8:29 p.m. EDT (0029 GMT or 5:59 a.m. IST on Sunday, May 18).
However, the mission failed to reach its intended orbit due to an anomaly in the rocket’s third stage, approximately six minutes after liftoff.
Telemetry data reportedly showed a drop in velocity and deviation from the expected flight profile during the third stage burn, leading to the premature termination of the mission. ISRO later confirmed a drop in chamber pressure in the third stage, resulting in the satellite failing to attain orbit.
This marks the first failure for the PSLV since August 2017, when the rocket’s payload fairing failed to separate during the launch of a navigation satellite. Prior to that, the PSLV had two failures in the 1990s — including its maiden flight in 1993 and a partial failure in 1997.
The EOS-09 satellite, weighing 1,694 kilograms (approximately 3,735 pounds), was equipped with a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) designed to capture high-resolution images regardless of weather or daylight conditions. It was scheduled to deploy into a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 535 kilometres, 18 minutes after liftoff.
Had the launch succeeded, EOS-09 would have become the ninth mission in India’s Earth Observation Satellite series. The satellite was reported to be identical in design and purpose to EOS-04, which was successfully launched in 2022.
EOS-09 is designed to provide continuous and reliable remote sensing data for operational applications across various sectors.
