India’s flagship PSLV rocket fails for the second time in a row

One payload out of fifteen survived and sent home some useful data

India’s Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has commenced an investigation into the failure of a PSLV launcher.

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.

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.

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 LinkedIn posts, the company reveals that KID fell to Earth along with the PSLV’s fourth stage.

“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.

“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.

The same can’t be said for ISRO, whose director Doctor V. Narayanan appeared on the 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 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. ®