​Tough timing: on ISRO PSLV-C61 mission, India’s space programme

In contemporary spaceflight, cost, reliability and time form a tense triangle. Whether more money can ensure more reliability is tricky to answer, more so following the failure of ISRO’s PSLV-C61 mission to launch the EOS-09 earth-observation satellite into a sun-synchronous polar orbit. EOS-09 was designed to produce high-quality radar images for civilian applications such as land-use mapping and hydrology studies and for defence surveillance, even if inclement weather prevailed over the areas of interest thanks to a synthetic aperture radar and a C-band data-link. Against the backdrop of tensions with Pakistan, such all-weather data would also have informed tactical decisions. The Department of Space had also invited several Members of Parliament to the launch event, which would have been unusual for a strictly civilian earth-observation satellite. ISRO chairman V. Narayanan later said that his team noted a glitch in the vehicle’s third stage minutes after liftoff that prevented the satellite from reaching its intended altitude. While the cause is yet to be ascertained, the failure is a reminder that a “textbook” launch of a rocket even as well-understood as the PSLV is not a given.

India is just embarking on its ambitious Space-Based Surveillance-3 programme to launch 52 surveillance satellites; 31 are to be built in the private sector, which still needs ISRO’s guidance. Focus on the programme also comes against the backdrop of Operation Sindoor, which revealed at least one gap in the country’s space-based military surveillance capabilities when it depended on a foreign commercial operator for more frequent data. Small margins of error in a rocket components’ operations separate success from failure, and thus cost from reliability. Time, however, is a separate matter: the pressing need for surveillance capabilities, if not improving the understanding of climate change and disaster risk over India, means that developers lack the luxury of time while also coming under greater pressure to deliver across both civilian and military domains. The PSLV-C61 failure follows the failure in January to place the NVS-02 navigation satellite into its designated orbit. Between an increasingly crowded launch manifest, research and development, data acquisition and processing pipelines, limited access to manufacturing capacity, and the human spaceflight programme, it will not be remiss to increase the resources available to ISRO if only to ensure its ability to meet India’s military needs while carrying on with other enterprises, all of which are becoming time-sensitive in a highly competitive global industry.