Former Principal Scientific Advisor to Prime Minister and former ISRO Chairman to investigate PSLV failure

Chennai. The Central government has constituted a two-member high-level committee to probe the recent failure of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket carrying the country’s strategic satellite. The chairman of the committee is former Principal Scientific Advisor to the Prime Minister K. Vijay Raghavan, while former Secretary of the Department of Space and former Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Dr. S. Somnath will join as co-chairman.

Interestingly, shortly before the formation of the committee, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval had visited the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center (VSSC) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. It is noteworthy that on January 12, 2026, ISRO’s PSLV-C62 rocket failed during the mission carrying the country’s strategic hyperspectral satellites ‘Avnesha’ and EOS-N1.

Along with EOS-N1, 15 other small satellites of Indian and foreign organizations were also destroyed. Dr V Narayanan, Secretary, Department of Space and ISRO Chairman, had earlier said that the first two stages of the rocket were normal, but there was a glitch in the last part of the third stage’s performance which led to deviation in the flight path. According to reports, an internal committee of ISRO is already analyzing the flight data.

PSLV is a four-stage launch vehicle, in which the first and third stages use solid fuel and the second and fourth stages use liquid fuel. Experts believe that the failure of PSLV-C62 appears to be similar to the PSLV-C61 mission in May 2025, in which a problem occurred during the third stage and the rocket deviated from the path. This PSLV-C62 failure is one of three consecutive failures that have affected satellite missions related to India’s strategic interests.

In January 2025, the NVS-02 navigation satellite was placed in the GTO orbit, but due to its pyro valve not opening, it could not go further into the orbit. Till now, the report of the Failure Analysis Committee constituted on the NVS-02 failure has not been made public, which is different from ISRO’s past tradition. A retired senior space sector official said, “Once there may be an accident, second time there may be a failure, but the third time? It is a matter of grave concern.”

He said that despite the failure in campaigns costing hundreds of crores of rupees, lack of accountability and responsibility is a serious issue. The new committee is expected to analyze the reasons for the PSLV-C62 failure in depth and present concrete conclusions, so that such incidents can be prevented from recurring in the future.