JOIN USRocket explodes, falls into sea
The GSLV-FO6 exploded soon after take-off from the Satish Dhawan Spaceport here and plunged into the sea, forcing the mission to be aborted.
“I am extremely sorry to announce that the GSLV-FO6/GSAT-5P satellite mission has failed,” a crest-fallen ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan declared here.
At the same time he said: “We learn from failures and that leads to success,” he told a crowded press conference at SHAR, 100 km north of Chennai, putting on a brave face two hours after the flight crashed.
Rs 325 crore loss
The crash has cost ISRO a sizeable Rs 325 crore.
The 51-metre tall GSLV had four strap-on motors in its first stage and a Russian-made higher efficiency cryogenic engine in the third stage. It was carrying the 2,310 kg exclusive communication satellite with 24 C-band and 12 extended C-band transponders to augment India’s satellite communication capacities.
This is ISRO’s third GSLV mission to fail so far.
As expectations ran high after the last April GSLV-D3 catastrophe when India flight-tested its first fully indigenous cryogenic stage engine, the lift-off at 16:04 pm looked perfectly normal and spectacular as the rocket roared into a clear sky. But the media contingent covering the launch from the terrace of the Brahma Prakash Hall and hundreds of others were in for a rude shock as the bright reddish-orange plumes dramatically turned into blood-red, signalling that the vehicle was exploding less than two minutes after take-off.
The grayish-black smoke spiralled into complicated patterns. Even as the launch-watchers tried to make sense of this terrible happening in the air, small rocket-like objects (apparently the strap-on motors) were seen plunging into the Bay of Bengal. Clearly, the GSLV had been jinxed yet again.
Explaining the sequence, Radhakrishnan said the vehicle’s performance was normal up to 50 seconds after take-off. The GSLV-FO6 was to have been launched on Monday last but was put off after a helium gas leak was detected in a valve in the cryogenic stage during pre-flight checks.
Beyond 50 seconds, “the vehicle altitude was increasing, leading to a higher angle of attack,” said the ISRO chief.
In simple terms, the GSLV-FO6 had already begun to wobble. The “controllability of the vehicle” was soon lost due to heavier structural loads gushing up the rocket than anticipated. This in turn “led to the breaking up of the vehicle,” said Radhakrishnan.
Noticing the vehicle tearing apart which was also confirmed by radar signals, the range safety officer issued the destruct command at 63 seconds after take-off.
Though all the four strap-on motors in the first stage of the flight and the S139 solid stage propellant worked as expected, it deviated from the projected “safety corridor” later, said an ISRO scientist.
At that time of the flight, the vehicle was at an altitude of 8 km and at a distance of 2.5 km from the Sriharikota coastline, said Radhakrishnan. Radar data subsequently showed that the debris had fallen into the sea.
Stating that a detailed analysis had already commenced and would go on for the next two days here, the ISRO chief said initial results showed that “four connectors that take control commands and signals from the on-board computer did not reach the electronics actuation stage.”