India’s flagship PSLV rocket fails for the second time in a row
- Reference: 1768365333
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/01/14/isro_pslv_mission_fail/
- Source link:
The PSLV – aka the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle – is an expendable medium launch rocket that India devised and has flown since 1993. ISRO has launched 64 of the rockets and chalked up 58 successes. This mission, PSLV-C62 / EOS-N1, employed the PSLV-DL variant of the rocket, which uses a pair of external boosters. Other PSLV variants use four or six external boosters.
The mission was a commercial affair, with 15 payloads aboard.
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Sadly, the craft’s third stage experienced an anomaly and the rocket didn’t reach its intended orbit. 14 of the payloads were lost, among them the Theos-2 Earth Observation satellite built jointly by the UK and Thailand, and AyulSat, an effort to demonstrate refueling in space.
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The payload that survived is called the KID Capsule and is an experimental craft designed to return to Earth from space. KID is the work of a company called Orbital Paradigm, which figures the world has plenty of launch capacity but little ability to de-orbit payloads such as products manufactured in space. The company hopes to create commercial return-to-Earth capability.
In a pair of [4]LinkedIn [5]posts , the company reveals that KID fell to Earth along with the PSLV’s fourth stage.
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“The capsule endured a way steeper angle than the nominal mission was foreseeing (around -20° instead of -5°),” the post states. “It seems we entered in the atmosphere still coupled to the rocket upper stage.”
The capsule nonetheless released, at the hellacious speed of Mach 20 and experienced 28G of force – almost twice the nominal scenario.
Despite those astounding forces, KID transmitted 190 seconds of telemetry, some of which indicate that its payloads remained at between 15°C and 30°C during the capsule’s very rapid descent. Sadly, the craft did not transmit data destined for customers.
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“KID was tested beyond its design envelope, and it worked,” the post states. “Separation, power-on, and data transmission, even after reentry, all performed well despite degraded conditions. Based on initial analysis it seems that we achieved 4 out of 5 launch milestones, albeit through an off-nominal profile. The failure to deliver customers’ data prevents us from declaring the mission a success.”
Orbital Paradigm is therefore not entirely unhappy with the mission.
[8]India's Moon orbiter was shifted suddenly to avoid Korea's and NASA's craft
[9]Japan loses another H3 launcher, plus the satnav bird it carried
[10]India becomes just fourth country to dock satellites in orbit
[11]India delays planned space station and moon base by five years
The same can’t be said for ISRO, whose director Doctor V. Narayanan appeared on the [12]live stream of the launch to admit that the rocket’s third stage displayed “disturbance” followed by a deviation in its flight path.
ISRO’s last PSLV launch, May 2025’s PSLV-C61 / EOS-09, also [13]failed after problems with its third stage.
India promotes itself as a proven source of cost-effective commercial launch capabilities, and a rising power in space.
No program exemplifies the latter more than Gaganyaan, India’s effort to launch humans into space and establish a space station and moon base. ISRO hopes to advance those ambitions during 2026 with three uncrewed missions. Gaganyaan will use another made-in-India rocket, the LVM3, which has a perfect record after 9 flights. ®
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[4] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7416876336415186945/
[5] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7416502197368238080/
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[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/22/indian_korean_moon_orbiters_near_miss/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/23/jaxa_h3_failure_inquiry/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/16/isro_spadex_satellite_docking_succeeds/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/23/india_space_timeline/
[12] https://www.youtube.com/live/GgYh2Vv87ik
[13] https://www.isro.gov.in/Mission_PSLV_C61_EOS_09.html
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The other version [of nominalism] specifically denies the existence of abstract objects as such—objects that do not exist in space and time.
Which means that nominalism itself does not exist. "Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
See also: post-structuralist true believers, who claimed (or claim, if there are any left) that there is no such thing as "meaning" and that Jacques Derrida's books explain this.
Points for excellent use of the "Creative Bullshit Generator".
I once wrote a random buzzphrase generator in Visual Basic for amusement. It looks like the Indian Space Agency has infringed my patent.
Reg Standards only please: Mach20 = 0.2288% of the maximum velocity of a sheep in a vacuum
Of course, Mach20 is a nice round number, maybe therefore a new Reg Standard = 1 KID ???
An unfortunate event but made me wonder about what kind of insurance there might be for payloads bound for space and it turns out there's quite a variety of different policies you can take out on things like satellites or the rockets themselves. On an amusing side-note I wonder if reusable launch vehicles like the Falcon 9 can get a no claims bonus :D
Insurance Agent: "So Mr Musk, we understand that you'd like a discount on insuring a used rocket that has already been set on fire 20 times?"
These days SpaceX sells the use of those boosters as "flight proven", but you do pay less than if you insist on a brand new one
Although, to be fair, SpaceX's life leading (i.e. most used) boosters are typically reserved for Starlink launches, rather than paying customers.
"but you do pay less than if you insist on a brand new one"
You actually pay more. SpaceX are still producing boosters but at a much reduced rate, Wiki suggest 8 boosters had their first flight in 2025. I was surprised to learn they only have around 20 to 25 active boosters to support around 170 F9 launches a year.
My favourite
"unscheduled disassembly" is my favourite.
"experienced an anomaly"
"a way steeper angle than the nominal mission was foreseeing"
"the capsule’s very rapid descent"
"tested beyond its design envelope"
"despite degraded conditions"
"an off-nominal profile"
"displayed “disturbance” followed by a deviation in its flight path"
At least we still have poetry!
Cheers to figuring out the issue and many future "nominal" launches!
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalism
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalism