PSLV-C62 accident: Failure analysis committee to be formed | India News

BENGALURU: The Indian Research Organization has been analyzing data from the failed PSLV-C62 since January 12 and is expected to formally set up a Failure Analysis Committee (FAC) to investigate the cause of the accident and recommend corrective measures soon.Nearly a month has passed since the failure, the second in multiple attempts by PSLV, and the analysis so far has been done by an expert committee internally known as the ‘Data Analysis Committee’ or DAC, multiple sources confirmed to TOI.

“A committee of experts is analyzing the data,” ISRO chairman V Narayanan told TOI, without elaborating further. One scientist said the DAC is tasked with analyzing telemetry, ground station records, logs and processing files and putting them on a timeline before any higher-level investigation begins. To this end, the DAC has about six minutes of flight information, with recording intervals accurate to two milliseconds, another scientist said. He described it as a large amount of material that could reveal the health of the vehicle when an anomaly occurred.Isro has not yet indicated the timeline for the launch of the next PSLV built by the HAL-L&T alliance, which was initially expected to take place in the first quarter of this year. Multiple sources confirmed that the mission has been put on hold until analysis of PSLV-C62 failures is completed. “Committee [DAC] It is currently in the final stages of analysis and once the process is completed, the FAC will be formally established. One source said this could happen quickly, in just a few days. “Unlike the DAC, which is headed by the former Chairman of ISRO and consists of an in-house team, the FAC will also comprise experts from outside the Department of Space (DoS).The scientist said that in addition to analyzing data from the PSLV-C62 mission to determine what exactly happened during the mission, the DAC’s second priority will be to examine any links to the previous failure (PSLV-C61 in May 2025) and then conduct a comprehensive review of the 33-year-old PSLV vehicle. “After two repeated failures, it was necessary to revisit the entire PSLV again,” the scientist said, adding that the role of the DAC was to provide all the information the FAC might need to perform its analysis.“There will be data from telemetry, ground stations, tracking data and other information about the process and testing, all of which will need to be analyzed and presented correctly for the FAC to start working,” the scientist said.While ISRO has not officially said anything about launching other launch vehicles, the agency has been conducting rigorous reviews before all planned missions. It is preparing for the GSLV mission, while the planned SSLV mission is said to be on hold as its second stage is identical to PSLV’s third stage (PS3), The Times of India reported last week.On January 12, after normal liftoff and second-stage performance, PSLV-C62 malfunctioned on PS3, resulting in failure. “…Towards the end of the third phase, we saw little more disturbance in the vehicle’s roll rate, followed by deviations in the flight path. We are analyzing the data and we will come back at the earliest,” Narayanan said shortly after.