ISRO suffers setback, after successful launch fails to put observation satellite in orbit

India's space agency ISRO suffered a setback even as it successfully launched a a new Earth observation satellite to space , it failed to put it in orbit on Thursday morning. The EOS-03 launched today was capable of imaging the entire country four to five times every day and was riding on a GSLV rocket (GSLV-F10). This was ISRO's first Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) launch after Chandrayaan-2.

So what was this observation satellite intended to do? ISRO officials describe EOS-03 as a "state-of-the-art" Earth observation satellite with three main objectives: near real-time imaging with frequent revisits to the same region, monitoring natural disasters and other short-term events, and picking up spectral signatures for agriculture and forestry to monitor items like crop health.

This marked the space agency ISRO's first satellite launch since Dec. 17, 2020. ISRO completed three launches in 2020 in January, November and December.