Bengaluru: Minutes before dawn on Thursday, the nation lost an ‘eye’ in the sky when ISRO’s future workhorse, the cryogenic engine, snorted and failed to ignite. It veered off the course, failing to put the crucial earth observation satellite EOS-03 into the intended orbit in space.
The EOS-03 was encapsulated in a four-metre diameter Ogive-shaped payload and was intended to be an important eye in space that would have provided near real-time imaging of a large area of interest at frequent intervals, which could be used for quick monitoring of natural disasters, episodic events and any short-term events. The mission life of the satellite was ten years.
ISRO pinned the blame on a ‘technical anomaly’ that prevented the ignition of the GSLV-F10 rocket’s cryogenic upper stage. While the first stage of the GSLV is solid fuel, the second is liquid fuel, and the third the cryogenic engine.
The failure came as a deep disappointment for ISRO as many of its missions have already suffered delay due to the pandemic. Though the lift-off at 5.43 am from the second launch pad in the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh was successful, the anomaly was realised after a few minutes. “The performance of the first and second stages was normal. However, cryogenic upper stage ignition did not happen due to a technical anomaly. The mission couldn't be accomplished as intended,” the ISRO said.
Soon after the 51.70 metre-tall GSLV-F10 bellowed fire and smoke as it raced to space, the live telecast on Doordarshan showed scientists in the Mission Control Centre (MCC) first breaking into thunderous applause and minutes later, silence descended in the MCC as the graph on the monitoring computers displayed the rocket going off its intended path.
The launch went off in textbook precision until the rocket’s second stage, some five minutes after the lift-off. A few minutes later, a few ISRO scientists were seen in animated discussion with their chairman K. Sivan. After a few rounds of discussions, the Range Operations Director announced: “Performance anomaly [was] observed in the cryogenic stage. [The] mission could not be accomplished fully.”
Sivan too made a formal announcement that the mission could not be accomplished, “mainly because it is a technical anomaly observed in the cryogenic stage.” GSLV-F10 was ISRO’s eighth flight with indigenous cryo,14th GSLV flight and 79th launch from Sriharikota.
Meanwhile, former ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair expressed shock over the unsuccessful GSLV-F10 launch mission but said the space agency is resilient enough to bounce back. Nair, during whose tenure of six years from 2003 25 successful missions were accomplished, indicated that setbacks of this kind were not unusual and said the ISRO should not lose heart.
