ISRO’s first 2026 mission PSLV-C62 fails

Chennai: The year 2026 began on a sad note for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) with the PSLV-C62 mission, which launched earth observation satellite, EOS-N1, 14 co-passenger satellites, and a KID capsule on Monday, ending in a failure after encountering an anomaly during the PS3 stage.

This is the second time that a PSLV mission has ended in a failure in the past one year after the PSLV-C61 also could not be fulfilled. After the failure of PSLV-C61 in May 2025, the ISRO is said to have taken enough precautions to ensure that the next mission that uses the rocket is successful, but today’s failure is a major setback.

Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle is known as the workhorse launch vehicle of ISRO completing 63 flights including notable missions like Chandrayaan-1, Mars Orbiter Mission, Aditya-L1 and Astrosat Mission. In 2017, PSLV set a world record by launching 104 satellites in a single mission.

The PSLV took off majestically at 10.17 am from the first launchpad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) and the first two stages performed nominally. However, an anomaly occurred when the rocket was at Stage 3 – around 203 seconds after the lift-off -- causing the rocket to not be able to reach its intended orbit. After this, the ISRO aborted the mission.

ISRO chairman Dr V Narayanan said PSLV is a four-stage vehicle with two solid stages and two liquid stages and the performance of the vehicle up to the end of the third stage was expected. “Close to the end of the third stage, we are seeing more disturbance in the vehicle, and subsequently, there was a deviation observed in the flight path. We are analysing the data, and we shall come back at the earliest," Narayanan added.

The PSLV-C62 mission was intended to deploy the 1,696 kg EOS-N1 Earth observation satellite and 14 co-passenger satellites into sun-synchronous orbit and a KID Capsule into a re-entry trajectory.

PSLV-C62 was the ninth dedicated commercial mission undertaken by NewSpace India Limited (NSIL). The mission is also a boost to the burgeoning private space sector in the country with Hyderabad-based Dhruva Space, alone contributing five satellites. Indian companies Laxman Gyanpith and OrbitAid have one satellite each.

Of the remaining eight, five were from Brazil’s AltoSpace, one each satellite from UK’s SSTL, one from Antharkshya Pratishtan of Nepal and the Ministry of External Affairs, India, and Orbital Paradigm (Spain) and RIDE (France).

The launch used the PSLV-DL variant with two solid strap-on motors and the mission demonstrated KID or Kestrel Initial Technology Demonstrator from a Spanish startup, which is a small-scale prototype of a re-entry vehicle being developed by the startup.