BENGALURU: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Friday announced the re-entry of the upper stage (C25) of the Launch Vehicle Mark 3 (LVM3) into the atmosphere on July 30, 2026. It was launched on November 2, 2025 from Sriharikota.
With this, ISRO marked the 5th operational flight of LVM3, it injected the CMS-03 communication satellite into its intended Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) with a perigee at 170 km and apogee at 29970 km.
After the spacecraft injection, the upper stage was passivated to limit any risks of accidental break-up and left in a highly elliptical, 21 deg inclined GTO. It was routinely tracked by the US Space Command, the International Designator 2025-249A and ISRO’s System for Safe and Sustainable Space Operations Management.
The Multi Object Tracking Radar at Sriharikota was also engaged to track the object wherever feasible, till a few orbits before its re-entry, the ISRO team said.
The most probable impact time was estimated to be around 12:08 UTC, 30 July 2026, in the Atlantic Ocean. Only a few elements like gas bottles, nozzle, and tanks, which are made of materials with very high melting points, were expected to survive the intense aero-thermal heating during the re-entry, the ISRO teams added.
The teams explained, for for GTO missions, even a few minutes change in lift-off time can lead to a large changes in the orbital lifetime of the upper stage (from a few months to more than a few decades). For the LVM3 M5, the pre-launch orbital life time estimate of the C25 stage was less than a year corresponding to the liftoff at 17:26 IST (11:56 UTC) on November 2, 2025.
The actual residual orbital lifetime of the rocket body turned out to be within nine months, close to the predicted lifetime and is fully compliant with the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee’s (IADC) recommended 25-year rule applicable to the lifetime of objects ending their mission in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) region. It also meets the India’s Debris Free Space Mission (DFSM) requirement, which recommends a shorter orbital lifetime of 5 years for rocket stages which pass through the heavily crowded LEO region, the release here said.