ISRO postpones PSLV-XL Proba-3 mission launch to Thursday due to anomaly

Barely 50 minutes ahead of the scheduled 4:08 pm liftoff on Wednesday afternoon, the Indian Space agency called off the launch of the PSLV-XL rocket, which was to ferry the European Space Agency's Proba-3 satellite to an orbit around the earth. 

"Due to an anomaly detected in PROBA-3 spacecraft, the PSLV-C59/PROBA-3 launch has been rescheduled to tomorrow at 16:12 hours," ISRO said. 

Proba-3 belongs to the European Space Agency, which represents 22 European nations. The twin Proba-3 satellites were built by a host of European firms, and the satellites were tested in Europe before being flown to India. 

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Proba-3 is a project more than ten years in the making, which has been implemented with the industrial support of more than 40 companies across Europe, under the leadership of a core team of companies in Spain and Belgium, such as Sener Aerospace (System Prime), Redwire Space (avionics, satellite assembly and testing, satellite operations), Airbus Defence and Space (satellite thermo-mechanical and propulsion, satellite environmental testing), GMV (formation flying algorithm and software, on-ground flight dynamics system), Spacebel (on-board, ground system and simulation software), and Centre Spatial de Liège (Coronagraph scientific instrument). 

After arriving at the ISRO spaceport, the satellites were tested, integrated, and fuelled at the Indian spaceport by European teams. 

The anomaly with the satellite was observed during the countdown to the launch, when crucial health checks of the rocket systems and satellite systems are conducted. 

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Depending on the issue, the European Space Agency teams at the Indian spaceport will now have to take corrective measures and prepare the satellite for launch. 

For this mission, ISRO is the launch service provider (responsible for the rocket and its launch), while the European Space Agency is responsible for the satellite, its functioning, and tracking. 

This is a commercial mission where the European Space Agency is paying the launch cost of approximately $30 million to NewSpace India Ltd., the commercial arm of ISRO.