1 week ago
7
ARTICLE AD BOX
Written by: Express News Service
3 min readNew DelhiFeb 26, 2026 11:55 AM IST
ISRO said the NVS-02 mission failed due to a likely broken electrical circuit, informed committee. (File Photo)
In the first public revelation about the causes of a mission failure in January last year, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has said that a broken electrical circuit was the most likely reason for the navigation satellite NVS-02, launched on a GSLV rocket, not reaching its intended orbit.
The GSLV-F15 mission, which flew on January 29 last year, happened to be ISRO’s 100th launch. The launch had gone off as designed, but subsequent manoeuvres to place the NVS-02 satellite in its intended circular orbit failed, meaning it could not be used for its intended purpose of satellite-based positioning.
ISRO has now said that the committee that investigated the failure had zeroed in on an electrical problem. The committee concluded that the main reason for the failure was a signal not reaching the pyro valve of the oxidiser line of the engine, meaning, the engine could not be ignited.
“The Apex Committee after thorough analysis of the simulation data concluded that the prime reason for the observation was found to be the drive signal not reaching the pyro valve of the oxidizer line of the engine meant for orbit raising. The committee concluded that the most likely cause for the observation is the disengagement of at least one contacts (in each of the main and redundant paths) of the connector,” ISRO said in a statement on Wednesday.
ISRO said that committee had provided a set of recommendations for enhancing the redundancy and reliability of pyro system operations in future missions, and they are being implemented.
“In line with these recommendations, all the corrective actions were successfully implemented in CMS-03 spacecraft launched on November 2, 2025 by LVM-3 M5, and the pyro systems performed satisfactorily placing the satellite in the intended orbit. Further, these set of recommendations will be followed for all future missions, as applicable,” it said.
India’s space agency has faced tough times in the last one year, with several of its missions running into problems. Besides the failure of the GSLV-F15 mission involving the NVS-02 satellite, two other missions with PSLV rocket, ISRO’s most reliable launch vehicle, failed in two back to back launches, in May last year, and again in January this year. Both the missions failed after anomalies in the third stage of the rocket.
Story continues below this ad
While the report of the failure assessment committee in the case of PSLV launch failure in May last year has been submitted but not made public, a similar committee probing the reasons for failure of this January’s launch is still to complete its work. However, Science Minister Jitendra Singh had said that the reasons for the two failures were unrelated.
English (US) ·