BENGALURU: At a time when a series of natural disasters are haunting the country, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Thursday failed to put its state-of-the-art earth observation satellite that was designed and developed planned to give advance information on weather conditions, agriculture, forestry and water bodies.
ISRO failed to accomplish its GSLV-F10 mission to launch its first state-of-the-art earth observation satellite EOS-03.
The geostationary satellite launch vehicle (GSLV) rocket which took off at 5.43 am, accomplished the separation of the first two stages, but the third stage – the cryogenic stage -- which carried the satellite, failed to ignite, in turn failing to release the satellite in its geosynchronous transfer orbit.
"The cryogenic Upper Stage ignition did not happen due to technical anomaly. The mission couldn't be accomplished as intended," ISRO said in a statement.
The rocket’s third stage carried a four-metre diameter Ogive Payload fairing encasing the EOS-03 satellite. The EOS-03 is the first state-of-the-art agile Earth observation satellite that was planned to be put in geostationary orbit.
The satellite was to provide near real time imaging of large area regions of interest at frequent intervals, and was to serve in quick monitoring of natural disasters, episodic events and any short term events. It was also equipped to obtain spectral signatures for agriculture, forestry, water bodies as well as for disaster warnings, cyclone monitoring, cloud burst/thunderstorm monitoring etc.
The mission, which launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota, was the first flight of GSLV with 4m dia Ogive Payload fairing which could accommodate larger payloads.
This was the first GSLV flight after the Chandrayaan-2 mission in September 2019 which successfully went to the moon, but was unable to accomplish the landing, which. The Chandrayaan-2 orbiter continues to orbit the moon, sending data back to earth.