ISRO Ready For First Satellite Launch In 4 Months After Failure In August

Bengaluru: For more than four months, all Indian rockets have been grounded after the country's first private-sector manufactured satellite was declared unsuccessful in August last year. ISRO, the country's premier space agency that handled the launch seems to have regained confidence and is ready for a lift-off on January 12, if all goes well.

In what is seen as a big embarrassment to ISRO, the 41st mission of the PSLV, which carried the satellite, failed on August 31 as the satellite's protective heat shield did not drop off. A group of scientists and experts were investigating what went wrong.

Since then, the space agency had an agonising four months fixing the problem on its rockets. ISRO now says the problem has been resolved and it is ready to fly its rockets again with 31 satellites.

"We will be carrying our Cartosat Series satellite, a microsatellite and a Nanosatellite. Apart from that we are taking 28 customer satellites in this launch," ISRO chairman Dr AS Kiran Kumar told NDTV. Asked if foreign vendors still have confidence in ISRO, Dr Kumar said, "Yes, they have great confidence and they are not all perturbed by what has happened because they understand that in launch vehicle activities, there could always be some issues once in a while." 

ISRO has fixed the problem in the heat shield that failed to open during the August launch, killing the satellite in space. The upcoming mission this month will see satellites from the USA and Finland, among others, fly into space.