The dawn of the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota was signaling a historic digital revolution, but the dream was shattered just eight minutes into the flight. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)’s PSLV-C62 mission, considered a turning point in India’s space history, fell victim to a technical snag in the third stage.
Monday (January 12) at 10:18 am IST PSLV-C62 lifted off. The first two stages of the rocket were completely normal and everything appeared to be proceeding according to plan at Mission Control. But as the rocket was entering the third stage, a performance disturbance was recorded. Within moments, telemetry data was disrupted and the rocket’s track began to deviate from its intended path. After this the uncertainty regarding the mission continued to deepen.
This mission was associated with not only a DRDO satellite, but also the dream of an ambitious orbital data hub of India. The MOI-1 payload included in this mission was considered to be the cornerstone of the world’s first “space server room”. It was a 6-kilowatt orbital data and power hub, to be placed in a sun-synchronous orbit of approximately 500 kilometers.
Hyderabad-based startups TakeMe2Space and Eon Space Labs had the shared vision behind this project. Their goal was to create a distributed power and data grid in space where small, energy-limited satellites could “plug-in” to process big data and AI models in real-time. It was being considered as a kind of cosmic power bank for the global space economy.
If this experiment was successful, India could emerge not just as a satellite launching country but as a space-infrastructure service provider. This project could take India beyond its traditional role of signal relay and put it at the center of space-based data processing and energy supply.
However, this ambitious roadmap has come to a standstill with the failure of the mission. MOI-1 could not reach its intended orbit and the mission ended with great disappointment on Monday. ISRO has confirmed that the data of the technical glitch in the third stage is being analyzed and detailed information will be shared later.
Despite this, the startups involved in the project have indicated that they will not back down from their long-term vision. This failure is once again a reminder that even though the geography of the Internet and data is set to change, the door to space still remains extremely steep and challenging.
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