India fails to put earth observation satellite into orbit

India's first space mission of 2021 suffered a major setback after an indigenous rocket carrying a state-of-the-art earth observation satellite ended in failure in the early hours of Thursday due to 'a technical anomaly.' 

The state-owned Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket blasted off successfully with the earth observation satellite -- EOS-03 -- from the southern spaceport of Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh state at 5.43 this morning.

"However, the mission could not be fully accomplished mainly because there's a technical anomaly observed in the cryogenic stage," ISRO chairman K Sivan said in a statement.

In a separate tweet, ISRO said, "GSLV-F10 launch took place today at 05.43 Hrs IST as scheduled. Performance of first and second stages was normal. However, Cryogenic Upper Stage ignition did not happen due to technical anomaly. The mission couldn't be accomplished as intended."

EOS-03 could have helped India's weather department monitor natural disasters like cloudbursts and cyclonic storms and its armed forces plan an operation in case of need, according to sources.

Earlier, the Indian space agency had twice shelved its plan to launch the satellite into space. On the other hand, "this is the fourteenth flight of GSLV", ISRO said.