India's first launch of 2021 has ended in failure.
An Indian rocket carrying a new Earth-observation satellite for the
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) suffered a catastrophic failure shortly after launching early Thursday (Aug. 12) from the country's Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Sriharikota Island in eastern India. The liftoff occurred at 5:43 a.m. local time in India (8:13 p.m. EDT Aug 11/0013 GMT).
The launch failure, the first for India
since 2017, occurred sometime past the six-minute mark after the mission's rocket, the 12-story-tall Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, had ignited its cryogenic third stage.
The launch "could not be fully accomplished" because of a "technical anomaly observed in the cryogenic stage, ISRO chair K. Sivan said in a brief televised statement after the failed mission.
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