Sriharikota:
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) witnessed a spectacular failure when India's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) blew up shortly after lift-off. This is perhaps the biggest failure for ISRO so far.
Minutes after lift-off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at 4 pm on Saturday, the GSLV-F06 exploded mid-air.
"When destruct command was given, the vehicle was at a distance of 2.5 km from Sriharikota coastline. The debris has fallen into the sea," ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan said during a press briefing.
"When we looked at the initial data, the control command signal from onboard computer failed to reach the launch vehicle during first stage. What caused this interruption after 47 seconds after take-off has to be studied in detail," he added.
Radhakrishna finished off by saying, "We hope to get an assessment of what triggered this."
The satellite, GSAT-5P, was expected to fulfill telecommunication and weather needs and was built at a cost of Rs 150 crore. It was eventually expected to replace INSAT-2E that was sent up in 1999.
This is GSLV's third unsuccessful mission.
An earlier attempt, powered by a Russian cryogenic engine, failed in July 2006 while a more recent attempt in April this year with India's first indigenous cryogenic engine deviated after take-off.
Chandrayaan II was set to be launched with GSLV in 2013, but after today's failure that launch will be reviewed.