The first small satellite launch vehicle took flight in August 2022, standing 112 feet tall or 34 meters long. However, Indian Space officials stated that they recognized what went awry during the new rocket’s inaugural flight.
They asserted that initially, everything went smoothly. However, instead of delivering the two satellites to their intended circular orbit above Earth, the rocket expelled the payloads onto a very elliptical route that brought them within 76 kilometers of the Earth at the narrowest distance, or midpoint.
As a result, both spacecraft quickly plummeted back to Earth.
Six months after the disaster, ISRO officials discovered the root cause of the SSLV’s malfunction. There was a brief vibration disturbance on the Equipment Bay platform, as indicated by their integral research, during the second phase separation.
The extraordinarily strong vibration briefly saturated the rocket’s navigation system’s accelerometer. As a consequence, it malfunctioned, prompting a reclamation operation mode that attempts to put cargoes into stable rotation in the event of a recognized anomaly.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned satellites were not successfully retrieved. However, the release transpired when the SSLV was functioning at a slower-than-required speed.
The velocity imbalance is due, at least partially, to the fact that the VTM hasn’t ever fired up, which is a recovery-dependent and independent variable.
