Rocket fails to launch navigation satellite

sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh) — It was a black Thursday for Indian space programme as it suffered a serious setback after its workhorse rocket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) failed to deliver India’s eighth navigation satellite in its intended orbit.

The 1,425 kg Indian Regional Navigation Satellite-1H (IRNSS1H), which was launched at 7 pm on board the PSLV, was declared unsuccessful after its heat shield failed to separate. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar said: “The mission was unsuccessful.”

“The rocket heat shield didn’t separate. The satellite is inside the heat shield,” he added. Speaking to the media, Kiran Kumar said the rocket engines performed well but only the heat shield did not get separated.

“The satellite was seen rotating inside the heat shield enclosure,” he said. Queried about the impact of the mission failure on getting commercial launch prospects, the ISRO Chairman said the issue has to be studied.

The rocket’s heat shield should have separated some three minutes into the launch, but it failed to. The scientists waited for some 19 minutes to see if it would separate, and then declared the mission unsuccessful. The IRNSS-1H satellite was to have been slung into orbit at around 507 km above the earth. Rocket scientists are perplexed at the failure.

“It is really perplexing that such a thing has happened. Normally the PSLV rocket has several redundancies built into it,” R.V. Perumal, a former ISRO scientist, said. He said all the commands are preplanned and built into the computers. “There cannot be any manual command,” he added.

Earlier, at around 7pm the rocket PSLV standing around 44.4 metres tall and weighing 321 tonnes with a one-way ticket hurtled towards the skies ferrying the IRNSS-1H. —