PSLV-C62 / EOS-N1 mission failed due to an anomaly in the 3rd stage. Again.

PSLV-C62 mission launched on 12 January 2026, 10:18:30 AM IST from SDSC, Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. The primary payload was EOS-N1, a hyperspectral Earth observation satellite for DRDO. It was supposed to be used for strategic application.

Along with this there were 15 co-passenger payloads, from both domestic and overseas customers. Notably AayulSAT from a Chennai-based startup called OrbitAID. It was supposed to perform India's first on-orbit fuel transfer. Then there is Thybolt-3 from Dhruva Space, MOI-1 from Eon Space Labs & TakeMe2Space, KID capsule from Orbital Paradigm (Spain) and satellites from various Indian universities, Brazil, Thailand and Nepal were also lost.

The everything went perfectly, but right before the 3rd stage (HPS3) cutoff, the vehicle started to spin uncontrollably and eventually crashing into the Indian Ocean. The cause of failure is unknown.

This failure grounds PSLV again, so we might not see PSLV launches for the next 6 months and it also sets back years of progress of these startups. Already our launch cadence is not great, without PSLV our launch cadence will take a big hit. The Failure Analysis Committee report of PSLV-C61 is not published.

When India is at its inflection point in its space journey, such failures slow down the growth. Let's hope that ISRO fixes the issue as soon as possible and come back stronger. Also we want ISRO to be more transparent and need to share the details of PSLV-C61 & C62 failures.