Chennai, Jan 4 : After a rather muted 2021 which was hit by COVID pandemic

for the second successive year, the Indian Space Agency is gearing up for the New

Year with a series of missions in 2022.

In his New Year message, to ISRO scientists, Indian Space Research Organisation

(ISRO) Chairman Dr K Sivan said “last year, we had two missions in which one was

a dedicated commercial mission by NSIL. The GSLV-F10/EOS-03 mission failed due

to cryogenic stage anomaly.

A National level Failure Analysis Committee was constituted for the same and the

committee has identified the root cause and given its recommendations. Necessary

design changes are being incorporated to improve the robustness of concerned

systems, Dr Sivan said.

The GSLV-F10, carrying the Earth Observation Satellite, EOS-03, took off from

the SHAR Range, Sriharikota on August 12, 2021 at 0543 hrs as scheduled. The

performance of first and second stages was normal. However, the Cryogenic

Upper Stage ignition did not happen due to technical anomaly and the mission

could not be accomplished as intended.

Announcing the plans for 2022, Dr Sivan said “if you look, at the immediate task at

hand this year, we have many missions to execute, including the first unmanned

Gaganyaan mission.”

He said some of launch missions were EOS-4 and EOS-6 on board PSLV. Launch

of EOS-02 on board maiden flight of the Small Sattelite Launch Vehicle (SSLV).

Many test flights for Crew Escape System of Gaganyaan and launch of the first

unmanned mission of Gaganyaan would also take place this year.

“In addition, we also have Chandrayaan-03 mission, Aditya Ll, XpoSat, IRNSS

and technology demonstration missions with advanced indigenously developed

technologies on-board”, Dr Sivan said.(UNI)