https://arab.news/phkes
For decades, the Indian Space Research Organization, known as ISRO, has been the crown jewel of India’s scientific establishment. In the global space community, the ISRO is a David that regularly surpasses the world’s Goliaths. With the Mars Orbiter Mission, known as Mangalyaan, India became the first country to reach Mars orbit in its maiden attempt. And with the Chandrayaan-3 mission, it became the first to land a lunar rover on the moon’s south pole. It did all this with budgets that would barely cover the marketing for a Hollywood space epic.
But over the past year, the ISRO’s storied record has been overshadowed by three high-profile mission failures, including two consecutive launch failures for the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. For a program built on the twin pillars of “frugal innovation” and “unshakeable reliability,” this is more than a technical setback — it is a reputational crisis that threatens India’s position in a crowded commercial market.
The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle has been the workhorse of India’s space program for nearly 30 years. It carried India to the moon and Mars and has successfully deployed nearly 400 foreign satellites, earning India a lucrative slice of the global launch market. But recent anomalies in the third stage during the PSLV-C61 (May 2025) and PSLV-C62 (January 2026) missions resulted in the loss of Earth-observation and strategic satellites.
