ISRO's Imaging Satellite
Sriharikota: ISRO has commenced the countdown for the launch of a state-of-the-art Earth observation spacecraft on Friday, September 4, which will be India’s first-ever imaging satellite from the Geosynchronous orbit, official sources said.
The 27-hour countdown started at 23.30 hours on Wednesday, September 2, for the GSLV-F17/EOS-05 mission, and the 51.7 metre tall rocket is set to lift off at the appointed time of 2.55 AM on September 4 from the second launch pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, about 135 km from Chennai.
GSLV-F17 is the 19th flight of India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), ISRO said.
The scheduled Friday, September 4, pre-dawn launch is following a gap of nearly 8 months.
On January 12 this year, ISRO’s PSLV-C62 rocket carrying 16 satellites failed to place them in the intended orbit after encountering an “anomaly” in the critical third stage of the launch. This was ISRO’s only launch this year, and it failed.
A similar previous attempt in May 2025 (PSLV-C61-EOS-09) also did not succeed due to a “motor pressure issue,” and there was a drop in the chamber pressure of the motor case.
This post was last modified on September 3, 2026 9:15 pm