A committee that includes K. VijayRaghavan, former Principal Scientific Advisor, and S. Somanath, former Chairman, India Space Research Organisation (ISRO), will probe “systemic issues” underlying the successive failures of ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
While technical committees probe and submit ‘failure analysis reports’ when mishaps occur, this committee, The Hindu has reliably learnt, will investigate questions on whether “organisational” problems may have played a role in the debacles involving the PSLV.
On January 12, 2026 the PSLV-C62 failed in its mission to deliver 16 satellites into orbit, and crashed into the sea after the third stage of the rocket failed to ignite. This was similar to the May 18, 2025 failure of the PSLV-C61, in which, too, the third stage failed to fire, destroying as a result the EOS-09 satellite intended for the government’s strategic needs.
The committee members consist of experts who are external to the ISRO, and are expected to table their findings to ISRO Chairman, V. Narayanan, before April. On February 3, 2026, The Hindu reported that National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, who is also a member of India’s Space Commission, visited the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, reportedly in connection with the failure of the PSLV-C62 mission.
”A national-level expert committee has been constituted and is reviewing the reason for the anomaly in the PSLV vehicle,” the ISRO said in a statement to The Hindu.
The PSLV’s failures would be the core focus of the report, and the committee would be looking into the processes in the manufacture, procurement, and assembling of various components of the rocket. This has implications for other rockets, too, The Hindu was told, because they have commonalities.
India’s space ecosystem now involves several private companies and, therefore, the probe will not only be about which part or component failed, and who was responsible, but also whether there is a process in place to fix accountability, and how it may be improved. A technical committee of the ISRO will first table a report on the PSLV-C62 incident this week, The Hindu has learnt through reliable sources.
ISRO’s historical response to rocket failures has been to have a Failure Analysis Committee probe the reasons, and publicise its findings. This, however, has not taken place in the case of both the PSLV-C61 and PSLV-C62.
The Failure Analysis Committee report of the May 18 mishap was sent to the Prime Minister’s Office before the PSLV-C62 launch, but its details have not been made public.
The Failure Analysis Committee, constituted by the ISRO Chairman, is a body of experts within ISRO to lead in the event of a major incident. It is expected to reconstruct the chain of events leading up to a failure, and recommend corrective action before the rocket is cleared to fly again. The committee members include experts within ISRO as well as relevant experts from academia.
The PSLV is ISRO’s most successful satellite launch vehicle, and since 1993, the space authority has maintained a success rate of over 90%, placing nearly 350 satellites into their intended orbits.
At a press conference on February 2, the Union Minister of State for Science and Technology, and Earth Sciences Jitendra Singh, said that a “third party appraisal” was ongoing.
“It isn’t that we (the ISRO) are so unwise that we could not detect the reason for failures…this time, we are having a third party [appraisal] to create confidence, though we have expertise within ISRO for such analysis. Our probable next [launch] date, which we are ambitiously targeting, is June, after we satisfy ourselves that the problem is rectified. This year, we have 18 launches scheduled, with six of them involving private sector satellites. None has withdrawn their request to launch this means, trust is intact. Next year, we have three big foreign launches — Japan, the United States, and France- and none have shown apprehension. That means our credibility is intact,” Dr. Singh has said.
(Inputs from Hemanth C.S., Bengaluru.)
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