Something deeply unsettling unfolded on January 12 at Sriharikota. Minutes after liftoff, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C-62 failed, losing payloads from Brazil, Nepal and Spain, and satellites from the Defence Research and Development Authority and several Indian space startups. The incident sent ripples of unease through India’s space community.
What made it particularly painful was not just the losses, but the pattern of failure. Just eight months earlier, on May 18, 2025, the PSLV C-61 failed in an almost identical manner. Like in the case of C-62, the breakdown had occurred at precisely the same point: the third stage. The pattern was akin to your most reliable family car breaking down twice within months—each time because of the same mechanical fault.
In its first 62 launches, PSLV suffered only three failures. Now, the two near-identical failures raise an uncomfortable question: why was the May 2025 failure not fully resolved before authorising another launch? Under intense scrutiny is the decision to proceed with the launch, as the C-61 investigation report is pending at the prime minister’s office. At the heart of the matter could be a troubling problem: launching without fully learning.
Technically, the C-62 mission began smoothly. But after the first and second stages, telemetry showed a drop in chamber pressure during the third stage—the same problem that had doomed the May 2025 mission. Control was lost, roll rates spiked, and the vehicle drifted off course. Deprived of the thrust needed to achieve orbital velocity, the mission failed.
ISRO chairman V. Narayanan has since announced a failure analysis committee. For the time being, the two identical failures suggest a systemic issue rather than just bad luck.
LOSING COVER
The financial damage is substantial, with losses estimated between $200 million and $250 million. Many payloads were insured, but the trust deficit caused by the incident will be harder to underwrite.
A highly specialised domain, space insurance is dominated by a small global group of underwriters and reinsurers who cover pre-launch, launch, in-orbit and third-party liability risks. Major players include AXA XL, Allianz, Munich Re, AIG, and syndicates operating through Lloyd’s of London, typically working via brokers such as Marsh or Aon.
“After anomalies, insurers reassess risk models, especially when similar failures happen within a short span,” said Srimathy Kesan, founder-CEO of Space Kidz India Limited. “This often leads to temporary premium increases or additional technical disclosure requirements.”
India’s position in the space insurance ecosystem is evolving. Historically, the government insured many domestic missions, while international insurers covered high-value launches. Public-sector insurers such as New India Assurance have underwritten Indian satellites launched abroad in partnership with global reinsurers.
“More recently, private Indian insurers have begun entering the space insurance domain, particularly in satellite liability and in-orbit risk, reflecting the rapid growth of India’s private space sector,” Kesan said. “While large launch-risk covers are still predominantly backed by global markets, domestic participation has been increasing.”
But with the C-62 failure, said space analyst Girish Linganna, PSLV’s lifetime success rate has dipped to 93.7 per cent. “Consequently, insurance premiums for future Indian launches are expected to jump 20-30 per cent, threatening the cost advantage that made ISRO a global leader in the small satellite market,” he said.
More worrying is the loss of years of engineering work of international partners like Spain, Brazil, the UK and Nepal. “PSLV missions are now grounded until at least mid-February 2026,” Linganna said, “causing a massive backlog for New Space India Limited, ISRO’s commercial arm.”
PAUSE IN PROGRESS
For Indian startups, too, the C-62 failure has resulted in the loss of years of research and development. While there has been efforts to publicly project optimism, the fact is that the incident could seriously affect investor confidence in India’s space sector. The 2020 reforms that opened up space to private players now face the biggest test. It remains to be seen whether venture capital would continue to bet on Indian space startups after this fiasco.
Among the most prominent losses was the Hyderabad-based Dhruva Space’s Polar Access-1, which aimed to deploy a coordinated stack of four satellites, five separation systems, and multiple ground stations supporting ten missions across six Indian states and two countries. One payload was an earth-observation and technology-demonstration satellite developed by the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology and the Antarikchya Pratisthan Nepal, intended for vegetation density mapping. Another was the GUSAT-1, developed with C.V. Raman Global University, Bhubaneswar, slated to become Odisha’s first satellite mission, focusing on store-and-forward communication for disaster response. DSAT-1, developed with Dayananda Sagar University, Bengaluru, targeted amateur-band communications and telemetry. All were built on Dhruva Space’s P-DOT platform.
The northeast, too, had representation with LACHIT-1, developed with Assam Don Bosco University. It was supposed to be the region’s first satellite mission. There were additional satellites from Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Telangana.
International payloads included Spain’s Kestrel Initial Demonstrator (KID), a 25kg probe about the size of a football that was meant to test inexpensive ways to bring samples back from space. It is reported to have survived the mission failure for three minutes and sent data back to earth. There was also a tiny 250gm satellite from Brazil, named Orbital Temple—intended as a space memorial of those whose names were stored in the satellite.
Sanjay Nekkanti, CEO and cofounder of Dhruva Space, said the company’s focus was now on “a measured and timely turnaround” to make customers ready for upcoming launch opportunities “in under a few weeks”. “We continue to see strong momentum and maturity in the Indian space programme and we are confident that the ecosystem will grow,” he said.
The loss of DRDO’s Anvesha is a blow to national security. Designed for hyperspectral imaging, it was intended to detect military camouflage along India’s borders. More serious than the hardware loss could be the psychological fallout from the mission failure. The solid motor manufacturing processes for PSLV’s third stage share quality-control protocols with the LVM3 rocket, used by the Gaganyaan human spaceflight programme. If deeper manufacturing problems exist, astronaut safety would become a paramount concern.
India’s space economy, valued at $8.4 billion in 2023, is projected to reach $44 billion by 2033. Achieving this requires absolute reliability. Many experts are wondering whether ISRO is trying to do too much. With Chandrayaan-4, Shukrayaan, Gaganyaan, routine launches and commercial missions running simultaneously, quality checks may be suffering.
FINDING THE ROOT PROBLEM
The back-to-back failures point towards two main possibilities. First, manufacturing defects—a bad batch of solid propellant or casing materials. Second, design ageing—the 30-year-old PSLV design may be struggling with heavier and more complex multi-satellite rideshare missions. PSLV has been a workhorse for three decades.
The third stage uses solid fuel, which makes it impossible to adjust the throttle like you do with liquid fuel. This means that when something goes wrong, it goes wrong fast. The May 2025 failure indicated incomplete or uneven combustion. The January 2026 failure showed loss of control and tumbling—indicating nozzle malfunction or structural issues.
Both vehicles may have used third stages from similar production batches, possibly involving the same suppliers. Did the earlier investigation miss a manufacturing defect? Or did the fixes after May 2025 not fully address the root problem?
Quality control in rocket manufacturing is brutally unforgiving—even microscopic flaws can cause catastrophic failures. “This crisis should be ISRO’s wake-up call,” said Linganna. “Success can breed complacency; failure forces evolution. To restore global confidence, ISRO must take immediate action.”
SHRINKING MARGIN OF ERROR
The C-62 failure is not an unprecedented event in the global context. Across decades of orbital launch history, even the most mature and commercially successful space powers—including the US, Europe, Russia and China—have experienced clusters of launch failures tied to manufacturing and procedural defects. These failures have disrupted markets, shook confidence and forced resets. The C-62 setback should be viewed through this lens.
According to Kesan, the track record of the French company Arianespace is relevant here. “Ariane 5 (a heavy-lift launch vehicle) achieved one of the most impressive reliability records in spaceflight, recording 94–98 per cent success over more than 100 launches. Even this highly trusted system suffered anomalies, such as the 2018 VA-241 mission that placed satellites into an incorrect orbit,” she said. “The difference lay in response: swift investigation, transparent communication and rapid corrective action allowed Ariane 5 to continue flying with minimal long-term commercial damage.”
There are precedents of markets rewarding recovery capability. Early failures in SpaceX’s Falcon 9 programme, for instance, did not affect its future because the company was able to rapidly resolve anomalies, test aggressively and return to the flight stage with confidence. The lesson has been consistent—failures test hardware, but recovery tests institutions.
Sam Richards, director of Meridian Space Command—a UK-based company that incubates space-startup missions—told THE WEEK that PSLV’s 58:5 success-to-failure record makes it one of the most flight-proven systems still in active service, despite its four-stage architecture and reliance on solid propulsion, both of which are increasingly rare in modern launch design.
“The recent orbit insertion failure in the solid third stage is a reminder that rocketry remains unforgiving,” he said. “Two consecutive failures affect perception more than statistics; quantitatively, PSLV’s risk profile remains competitive for institutional, technology-demonstration, and cost-sensitive missions.”
According to him, reliability matters as the global space launch sector shifts towards newer, more flexible, and reusable systems. “PSLV’s risk is still low,” Richards said, “but expectations are rising.”
THE WAY FORWARD
Linganna wants ISRO to release the investigation reports for the two mission failures, and ground the PSLV fleet until the third-stage motor is completely redesigned or re-certified. He also suggested that ISRO invite private sector experts and international partners to audit quality control processes. ISRO should empower its scientists to focus on research, development and deep-space exploration, and hand over commercial operations to private players, he said.
According to him, the entire third-stage solid motor inventory should be replaced with freshly manufactured units using stricter quality protocols.
Richards said he still had faith in ISRO’s approach that combines technical discipline, cost efficiency and long-term strategic vision, enabling complex missions to be delivered with remarkable consistency. “India’s achievements in planetary and lunar exploration, alongside its growing commercial launch and satellite ecosystem, place it alongside Japan as a benchmark for sustainable national space development,” he said.
In space exploration, progress is rarely linear. Failures are not defining, but responses are. The C-62 failure should, therefore, be understood as a stress test of technical systems, organisational processes and market credibility. If ISRO responds with rigorous root-cause analysis, transparent disclosure, strengthened quality control and a confident return-to-flight roadmap, commercial confidence will soon be back.