The move follows a quiet visit by National Security Advisor Ajit Kumar Doval to the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram.
'A solid motor, once ignited, burns until the propellant is exhausted. It cannot simply stop mid-burn,' said a retired senior ISRO official. 'That is what makes this failure puzzling.' Venkatachari Jagannathan reports on the latest PSLV failure.
'There's too much coincidence in back-to-back failures of missions critical to national security.'
In a first-of-its-kind initiative involving precision-flying, Indian Space Research Organisation on Thursday successfully launched the Proba-3 mission onboard a PSLV-C59 rocket, a solar experiment undertaken by the European Space Agency.
In terms of success rate, the PSLV rocket has an enviable record of 57 successful missions out of 58 commercial ones.
India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle will lift off from Sriharikota on July 10 taking five foreign satellites into orbit, including three earth observation spacecraft whose imagery will be utilised by a Beijing-based company as well as an experimental nano-satellite that will deploy a large, light-weight sail in order to hasten its descent back to earth.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has rescheduled the launch of PSLV-C59 to Thursday due to an "anomaly" detected in the PROBA-3 spacecraft. The launch was originally scheduled for Wednesday at 4.08 pm from the spaceport in Sriharikota. The anomaly was identified by scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA), who requested the rescheduling of the launch. The PROBA-3 mission, a joint project between ESA and ISRO, aims to study the Sun's corona using two spacecraft that will fly in formation. The launch will provide valuable insights for ISRO's future solar missions, including the Aditya-L1 mission which was launched in September 2023.
Around 23 minutes after lift-off, the primary satellite got separated and it was followed by six other co-passenger satellites, which were deployed into the intended orbits sequentially, ISRO said.
Antrix, ISRO's commercial arm, is eyeing 10% of the $357 billion global market.
Heralding a new era, India on Friday night launched its heaviest commercial space mission ever with its polar rocket successfully putting five British satellites into the intended orbit after a flawless takeoff.
Aditya -- the name in Sanskrit refers to the Sun -- is a coronagraphy spacecraft manufactured at the U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru to study the solar atmosphere.
The main focus of the all weather RISAT-1B satellite will be to observe the Indian land with its C-band synthetic aperture radar.
Other than the Cartosat-2 series satellite, the PSLV is carrying 29 nano satellites from 14 countries - Austria, Belgium, Chile, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, the United Kingdom and the United States of America besides a nano satellite from India.
ISRO, in a tweet, said EOS-04 was placed into an intended sun synchronous polar orbit of 529 km altitude at 6.17 am.
Days after landing on the Moon, India will aim for the Sun on Saturday with its maiden solar expedition, as ISRO's trusted PSLV will carry the Aditya L1 mission on a 125-day voyage to the Sun.
Cartosat-3 satellite is a third-generation agile advanced satellite having high-resolution imaging capability.
RESOURCESAT-2A, intended for resource monitoring, is a follow-on mission to RESOURCESAT-1 and RESOURCESAT-2, launched in 2003 and 2011 respectively. It is intended to continue the remote sensing data services to global users provided by RESOURCESAT-1 and 2.
In a landmark late Monday night journey into a new era of space application, India successfully launched its first dedicated navigation satellite using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle which blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi lauded the scientists saying, "with this successful launch, we will determine our own paths powered by our technology".
As India prepares to launch its Rs 450 crore mission to Mars this year, a top space official says the country's first martian odyssey -- that has attracted some criticism -- is not just for pride but for undertaking "meaningful research".
The polar satellite launch vehicle's 52nd mission is scheduled for lift-off at 15.41 hours on Thursday from the second launch pad at the spaceport of Sriharikota 'subject to weather conditions'.
The launch is tentatively scheduled at 09.28 hrs IST on November 25, 2019 subject to weather conditions, ISRO said.
Thursday's launch is the last one of 2020 for ISRO.
The space agency had earlier announced that the launch is tentatively scheduled at 09:28 hrs IST on November 25, subject to weather conditions.
CARTOSAT-3 is a third generation agile advanced satellite having high resolution imaging capability.
In its first multi-orbital launch, India's workhorse PSLV will on Monday inject eight different satellites, including the country's weather satellite SCATSAT-1 and five from other nations, into two different orbits.
The stage is set for the launch of India's satellite IRNSS-1D on Saturday from Sriharikota onboard workhorse PSLV-C27 that would pave the way for the country's own navigation system on par with the GPS of United States.
India is set to operationalise its own navigational system with the successful launch of IRNSS-1D, the fourth in the series of seven navigational satellites, onboard PSLV-C27 from Sriharikota on Saturday.
In a textbook mission, ISRO's PSLV-C32 lifted off from Sriharikota and later injected the IRNSS-IF in sub-Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit.
With the Indian Space Research Organisation set to launch the Mars Mission on November 5, Chairman K Radhakrishnan, in an interview with Praveen Bose, talks about the complexities, the challenges and the benefits of the Rs 450-crore mission.
India successfully launched IRNSS 1C on board ISRO's PSLV C26 rocket from the spaceport at 1.32 am on Thursday, moving a step closer to setting up the country's own navigation system on par with Global Positioning System of the US.
The Indian Space Research Organisation successfully launched India's fifth navigation satellite IRNSS-1E from Sriharikota.
The space agency launched 104 satellites, breaking the previous record of 37 by Russia.
This is ISRO's new record of launching 20 satellites, including those from the US, Germany, Canada and Indonesia.
India's ambitious space mission to explore planet Mars would be launched on November 5 from the spaceport of Sriharikota, ISRO announced on Tuesday.