The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)’s 100th rocket mission hit a hurdle after its navigation satellite, which was launched on Wednesday, suffered a technical glitch on Sunday.
In an update on the mission on its website, ISRO said the “orbit raising operations towards positioning the satellite to the designated orbital slot could not be carried out as the valves for admitting the oxidizer to fire the thrusters for orbit raising did not open”.
The satellite – NVS-02, made by U R Rao Satellite Centre – was to be placed in a geostationary circular orbit at the designated spot over India. Since the liquid engine onboard the satellite is not functioning optimally, the effort to send it to its designated orbit is either delayed or may be abandoned altogether.
“The satellite systems are healthy and the satellite is currently in elliptical orbit. Alternate mission strategies for utilising the satellite for navigation in an elliptical orbit is being worked out,” ISRO said.
At 6:23am on Wednesday, ISRO successfully launched their GSLV-F15 carrying the NVS-02 at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, marking its 100th mission. The mission is also the first for the space agency’s Chairman V Narayanan, who assumed office recently. It is also ISRO’s maiden venture this year.
Space experts said the satellite will not be able to perform its designated tasks from the highly elliptical orbit of nearly 170 kilometres to the nearest point around Earth and nearly 36,577 kilometres at the farthest point from the Earth.
The 2,250kg satellite – second of the second generation – was part of the Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC), a regional equivalent of the Global Positioning System or GPS.
NavIC, which India developed after the 1999 Kargil war with Pakistan, has given India its own share of challenges. In that conflict, India was denied access to high quality GPS data and then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee later promised to make a regional version of the GPS for the country’s strategic community.
Many satellites in the NavIC series, however, fell short of expectations. Since 2013, a total of 11 satellites have been launched as part of NavIC and of these, six have either entirely or partially failed for various reasons, and now the latest one also faces major technical glitches.