Explained | The failure of ISRO’s Geo-Imaging Satellite GISAT-1
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The cryogenic upper stage ignition did not happen due to a technical anomaly.
The story so far:
India’s attempt to place a geoimaging satellite (GISAT-1) with its GSLV-F10-EOS-3 mission did not succeed. The GSLV-F10 rocket of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) which blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on Thursday with the purpose of launching the Earth Observation Satellite EOS-3 into space, failed in its mission due to a ‘performance anomaly’. ISRO chairman K. Sivan announced that “a technical anomaly was observed in the cryogenic stage and the mission could not be accomplished.”
What caused the failure of the mission?
According to the ISRO, the GSLV-F10 launch took place at 05.43 IST as scheduled. Performance of the first and second stages was normal. However, the cryogenic upper stage ignition did not happen due to a technical anomaly. Chris Bergin of the NASASpaceFlight.com tweeted that the mission suffered a major failure in the third stage. “2-3 sep looked fine but the third stage started to roll after ignition and then it progressively worsened. Then the telemetry lines diverged.” It appears that while the first two stages separated without a hitch, the ignition of the third stage did not take place as programmed. The ISRO has confirmed that this mission could not be accomplished as planned. This failure is all the more surprising because the rocket launches since 2017 have been successful, and this breaks a long run of successful launches.
What was the supposed function of the satellite that the rocket was about to launch?
EOS-3 was the first state-of-art agile earth observation satellite which would have been placed in a Geo-Synchronous orbit around the Earth. While the first and second stage separations worked out fine, and nearly 12 minutes before the separation of the EOS-3, the mission failed. The objectives of EOS-3 were to provide real-time imaging of large areas of the Earth; to monitor natural disasters from its position in the sky; to provide warnings for natural disasters, observe cyclones, cloudbursts, thunderclouds etc.
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