Days after NSA’s visit to Isro centre, space minister rules out sabotage in PSLV failures

NEW DELHI: Space minister Jitendra Singh has ruled out the possibility of sabotage in two back-to-back PSLV failures and said that separate internal and external failure assessment committees have been set up to analyse what went wrong in each of the missions. He also revealed that Isro will attempt another PSLV launch in June.

Interestingly, Singh’s statements on Monday came days after National Security Adviser Ajit Doval paid a secret visit, reportedly on Jan 22, to the Thiruvananthapuram-based Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), purportedly at the directive of PM Narendra Modi.

Isro faced a huge setback on Jan 12 after its workhorse launch vehicle PSLV-C62, carrying surveillance satellite EOS-N1 and 15 co-passenger satellites, faced an anomaly during the third stage of the rocket launch.

Fifteen satellites were lost in space and only one satellite, a Spanish one named KID (Kestrel Initial Demonstrator), successfully transmitted “critical data” for about 3 minutes. Likewise, the PSLV-C61 launch in May last year failed due to a technical snag in the third stage of the rocket.

“What happened last time is not what happened this time,” Singh said, referring to the two successive failures of PSLV, which boasts a success rate of over 90%. Giving an analogy of an electric bulb, the minister said, “Last time the bulb fused, this time there was tripping outside.” But the two PSLV failures have not discouraged Isro’s commercial partners. “None of them has shown any apprehension,” he said.

On future launches, Singh explained that 18 launches are scheduled for 2026, including six by private players, with none being withdrawn after the PSLV failure. Three key launches are scheduled for 2027 from Indian soil by foreign partners from the US, Japan and France.

On PSLV, he said, “Our probable next date, which we are very ambitiously targeting, is in June, after we screen the report of the committee and rectify everything.”