After a long interruption forced by the Covid pandemic and the failed launch of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) in August 2021, India’s space agency, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation), had pushed back the launch of three Earth Observation (EO) satellites towards the end of the year.
However, it has once again deferred the launch of these satellites to the first quarter of 2022 according to news sources. The satellites — EOS-04, EOS-06, and EOS-02 — are expected to aid in disaster management, insurance related activities, agriculture, and water management among other things.
A sore point of reference continues to be China’s meteoric rise in space ventures, with Chinese state media claiming more than 50 successful launches. On the other hand, India’s lone successful launch was the PSLV-C1 mission that carried Brazil’s EO satellite Amazonia-1. As mentioned above, the GSLV mission, which was supposed to put EOS-03 into orbit, failed due to an anomaly in the third cryogenic stage.
With this announcement by the Department of Space, the Indian space scene is expected to have a busy first quarter in 2022.
