India’s ambitious space program suffered a stinging blow early Sunday when its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) failed to deliver the advanced EOS-09 Earth-observation satellite into orbit, marking the program’s first major failure in nearly eight years.
The mission, launched Saturday at 8:29 p.m. EDT (0029 GMT) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, encountered a critical anomaly during the third-stage ignition, dooming the 1,694 kg satellite that was meant to enhance India’s all-weather surveillance capabilities.
“Up to the second stage, everything was nominal. The third stage ignited but then we observed an anomaly,” a visibly disappointed ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan announced in a televised statement. “The mission could not be accomplished.”
Telemetry data revealed a sudden drop in velocity and chamber pressure during the third-stage burn, forcing mission controllers to declare failure just six minutes after liftoff. The $42 million satellite—equipped with cutting-edge synthetic aperture radar (SAR)—was lost before reaching its planned 535 km sun-synchronous orbit.
A Strategic Blow
The EOS-09, nearly identical to the successfully deployed EOS-04 (2022), was designed to provide high-resolution, all-weather imaging—a capability Indian defense analysts had hailed as crucial for monitoring border regions with Pakistan and China. Its loss deals a significant setback to India’s remote sensing ambitions.
First Failure Since 2017
This marks the PSLV’s first complete failure since August 2017, breaking a streak of 15 consecutive successful launches. While ISRO’s workhorse rocket has suffered just three failures in over 60 missions, this incident raises questions about quality control as India competes in the global space race.
Space experts note the particularly bad timing of this failure—coming just months after India’s triumphant Gaganyaan human spaceflight tests. ISRO has promised a “transparent failure analysis”, but the agency now faces pressure to explain why its most reliable rocket faltered.
As night shift teams at Mission Control pour over data, one thing is clear: this unexpected setback will force India to recalibrate both its Earth observation strategy and launch schedule for 2025.