The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) failed to launch a rocket to send a research satellite into space due to a problem with one of the engines.
“Today we planned the 101st launch from Sriharikota, the PSLV-C61 EOS-09 mission. PSLV is a four-stage rocket and its performance was normal till the second stage. The third stage engine started well, but during the third stage burn, we observed some problems which prevented the completion of the mission“, said the head of the organization V. Narayanan.
According to him, the pressure in the engine casing has dropped. “We are looking into what happened and will get back with answers as soon as possible“.
EOS-09 is an Earth observation satellite. It is capable of taking images in all weather conditions, day and night. These images are important for agriculture, forestry, urban planning, national security and disaster relief.
PSLV is a lightweight, single-stage, four-stage launch vehicle. The first and third stages use solid-fuel propulsion systems. The second stage is a Vikas liquid-fuel rocket engine that uses heptyl as a fuel (oxidizer - nitrogen tetroxide). The fourth stage is equipped with two liquid-fuel engines running on monomethylhydrazine (oxidizer - a mixture of nitrogen oxides). The PSLV-G modification additionally uses six boosters. PSLV-XL also has six boosters, but with greater power. The PSLV-DL and PSLV-QL versions have two and four boosters, respectively (similar to those used in the PSLV-XL).
The height of the rocket is about 44 m, the diameter of the main stages is 2.8 m, the launch weight is from 230 tons to 320 tons (depending on the configuration), the payload capacity is up to 3.8 tons.