GSLV-F10 fails due to valve leak, fuel supply interruption in third stage

ISRO on Friday submitted a report on the failure of the mission launched to put India's first Earth Observation Satellite (GISAT-1) into orbit. The failure of the mission, sent by the GSLG-F10 rocket, has been attributed to a build-up of low pressure from a leak in the rocket's liquid hydrogen tank.

The Failure Analysis Committee (FAC) set up to investigate found that the pressure in the hydrogen tank decreased due to damage to the soft seals of the vent and relief valves (VRVs) to reduce excess pressure in the tank. The supply of fuel to the cryogenic engine from the second liquid hydrogen (LH-2) tank of the U.S. was interrupted and the engine did not run.

According to the committee, the failure occurred when the rocket was about to enter the last stage of flight. The GSLV-F-10 rocket carrying GISAT-1 took off normally on August 12 last year from Sriharikota, the launch was aborted after a flight of 307 seconds.

Many campaigns have failed in the past

Earlier in 2019, the launch of Chandrayaan-2 had to be postponed due to helium leak. However, during this time, the good thing was that its information was received before the flight started, due to which there was not much damage. In 2010, the mission had to be postponed due to two consecutive glitches in the GSLV. Apart from GSLV, the IRNSS-1H mission also failed in 2017 due to non-removal of the heatshield of PSLV-C39.