The Small Satellite Launch Vehicle, a maiden attempt by ISRO to send lighter satellites into space, had placed them in an elliptical orbit, instead of a circular orbit, which would eventually destabilize the satellites, ISRO’s Chairman S Somanath said in a video update on the launch.
“A committee would analyse and make recommendations soon. The ISRO would come back with an SSLV-D2,” the organization said in a Tweet.
The Small Satellite Launch Vehicle carried an 135-kg earth observation satellite from ISRO, and 75-payload satellite built by girl students across rural districts. Dubbed AzaadiSAT, the satellite took transporters, a devise to measure ionising radiation in the orbit, and a selfie camera.
The ISRO Chief said the anomaly was observed after the rocket had reached an altitude of 356 km and the satellites had separated from the vehicle: “The satellites were placed in an elliptical orbit, in place of a circular orbit… ”
The “deficiency” in the SSLV has been identified in a logic (a series of instructions to be carried out upon detection of a certain event) for the identification of a sensor failure and initiate a salvage action.
Nevertheless, Somanath said ISRO was “very happy” about the performance of the rocket on several other counts: the propulsion systems, the separation of satellites, the low-cost electronics, and other sectors tried out for the first time by the organization in the SSLV.
The SSLV was ISRO’s attempt to fix a multitude of challenges in the satellite-launch process. The SSLVs are low-cost, offer quicker turnaround time, flexible in accommodating satellites, offer launch-on-demand feasibility, and can be put in space on a comparatively lighter infrastructural requirement, according to an ISRO brochure. They can be used to launch satellites in the range of 10-500-kg mass to altitudes up to 5 km in planar orbits.
The ISRO has said it would go deeper into the reasons why the orbit placement had gone wrong and implement recommendations by the committee set up to probe the incident.