INDIA: On Wednesday, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) thoroughly explained what went wrong with the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle’s first development flight last year and why the mission was unsuccessful.
ISRO says that a short-lived vibration disturbance on the Equipment Bay (EB) deck was caused by the separation of the second stage.
The summary of the failure analysis states, “Deep analysis of the flight events and observations, including countdown, lift-off, propulsion performance, stage separations, and satellite injection, showed that there was a vibration disturbance on the Equipment Bay deck for a brief period of time during the second stage separation, which affected the Inertial Navigation System and caused the Fault Detection & Isolation software to declare the sensors faulty.”
On August 7, 2022, the SSLV’s initial test flight blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center to place the ISRO’s EOS-02 satellite into a 356.2 km circular orbit. The mission also included the student satellite Azaadisat.
According to the assessment, even though the salvage mode was started to rescue the mission, it could not place the satellites in a secure orbit.
Changes in the separation system, dynamic characterization and design modification of structures, use of NaVIC data, and use of the Velocity Trimming Module (VTM) in a loop for salvage mode are only a few of the corrective steps suggested by the failure analysis study.
The report said that the next development flight, called SSLV-D2, would be done in line with the recommendations, their successful implementation, review, and approval by the right committees.
This is because the cause of the flight anomaly has been identified, and corrective actions have been suggested.
According to the ISRO, the EOS-07 satellite and two co-passenger spacecraft will be launched on SSLV’s second developmental mission (SSLV-D2/EOS-07 Mission), which is planned for the first quarter of 2023.
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