India’s First PSLV Mission of 2025 Ends in Failure
News Desk
Islamabad: India’s ambitions to advance its remote sensing and strategic surveillance capabilities suffered a blow on Sunday after the failed launch of its latest Earth-observation satellite, EOS-09.
The satellite was lost due to an anomaly during its launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched EOS-09 aboard its trusted Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) on Saturday, May 17, at 8:29 pm EDT (Sunday, May 18, 5:59 am IST).
Six minutes after liftoff, an issue in the rocket’s third stage caused the mission to veer off its intended course, ultimately preventing the satellite from reaching orbit.
“The PSLV is a four-stage vehicle. The first two stages performed normally. The third stage also ignited correctly, but during its operation, we observed an anomaly.
As a result, the mission could not be accomplished,” ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan said in a televised statement shortly after the incident. He added that a detailed investigation is underway to determine the root cause.
Telemetry data indicated a sudden drop in velocity and a deviation from the expected flight trajectory during the third stage burn. ISRO later confirmed a drop in chamber pressure in the third stage, which prevented the satellite from entering its planned sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 535 kilometers.
This marks the PSLV’s first failure since August 2017, when a payload fairing issue doomed a navigation satellite mission. Prior to that, PSLV experienced two earlier setbacks in 1993 and 1997.
The EOS-09 satellite, weighing approximately 1,694 kilograms (3,735 pounds), was equipped with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology to capture high-resolution images regardless of weather or light conditions. Identical in design to the EOS-04 launched in 2022, the satellite was expected to support various sectors by delivering uninterrupted and reliable remote sensing data.
While ISRO did not publicly detail the satellite’s specific mission objectives, reports in Indian media suggested EOS-09 would have significantly enhanced India’s strategic surveillance capabilities, particularly along the borders with Pakistan and China.
India Today had earlier highlighted the satellite’s all-weather, day-and-night imaging potential as “especially significant” in light of regional security concerns.
Despite the PSLV’s strong track record—over 60 missions since the 1990s—this failure underscores the inherent complexity and risks of space launches. The EOS-09 launch was ISRO’s first PSLV mission of 2025, following three successful launches annually over the past three years.
ISRO is now focused on investigating the anomaly and preparing for future missions.
