Newly-launched Indian satellite left stranded by propulsion problem
India just launched its first mission of 2025.
The Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) lifted off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on schedule today at 7:53 p.m. EST (0053 GMT and 6:23 a.m. local time on Jan. 29).
It was the 100th launch overall from the storied spaceport, which lies on the barrier island Sriharikota, off India's southeastern coast. The first orbital liftoff from the site occurred in August 1979, according to The Hindu.
NVS-02 was expected to take up a position along the geostationary belt, around 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above the equator.
Reaching geostationary orbit usually first involves launching into a low Earth orbit, before the rocket's upper stage fires to send the spacecraft into an elliptical transfer orbit, with a low perigee, or closest point to Earth, and a high apogee, or furthest point from Earth, around the altitude of geostationary orbit. When the satellite reaches apogee, the spacecraft fires its engines to raise the perigee and make the orbit circular at geostationary altitude.
This is, however, the point at which NVS-02 was found to suffer a value issue, could not fire its engines, and thus remains in transfer orbit.
ISRO is now looking into alternative solutions and uses for the satellite, potentially including using the spacecraft's smaller, attitude control thrusters to raise its perigee and prevent it deorbiting due to atmospheric drag.
"The satellite systems are healthy and the satellite is currently in elliptical orbit," ISRO says. "Alternate mission strategies for utilising the satellite for navigation in an elliptical orbit is being worked out."
RELATED STORIES:
— Major milestone! India becomes 4th nation to dock satellites in orbit
— Watch Chandrayaan-3's Pragyan rover adorably avoid a lunar crater (video)
— India launches Aditya-L1 solar observatory, its 1st-ever sun probe
NVS-02 is the second of five planned next-gen spacecraft in the Navigation with Indian Constellation. NavIC, which is designed to provide India and surrounding regions with positioning, navigation and timing services, similar to those provided by the US GPS and other systems.
The launch was India's first of 2025 and the 100th launch from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, situated on the barrier island Sriharikota, off India's southeastern coast.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
5 hours ago
- The Hill
Over 2K UFO sightings reported in first half of 2025
(NewsNation) — There have been more than 2,000 sightings of UFOs in the first half of 2025, according to data from the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC). The nonprofit organization collects reports of UFOs and investigates cases of unexplained sightings. The 2,174 sightings are an increase from previous years. In 2024, the agency logged 1,492 sightings between the beginning of January and the end of June, and in 2023, 2,077 were recorded in the same time frame. UFO sightings in 2025 NUFORC collected more than 3,000 reports during the first six months of 2025, but because of the stigma around UFOs, the group notes that many of them happened years or even decades before they were reported. Those numbers likely only represent a small number of actual sightings, said Christian Stepien, the group's chief technology officer. Based on anecdotal evidence, he believes roughly 5 percent of sightings get reported. The group takes reports from everyday citizens as well as air traffic controllers, police and members of the military. Interest in UFOs after David Grusch testimony The topic of UFOs (or UAPs, if you're talking to the U.S. government) has been in the headlines recently as lawmakers have pushed for more transparency on the subject. Whistleblower David Grusch came forward in 2023, alleging a secret UFO-retrieval program was being operated by the Pentagon. His testimony sparked congressional hearings and increased public attention to the issue of unexplained sightings. Since then, others connected with the government have come forward to support Grusch's claims, saying the Defense Department has not been honest with the public or Congress about the subject. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has remained firm in saying that there is no evidence unexplained sightings are extraterrestrial in nature and disavowing the existence of UFO-retrieval programs. Recent reporting from The Wall Street Journal suggested the agency itself may be behind long-standing rumors of alien technology as part of efforts to cover up Earth-based top-secret projects. The reporting also noted that new employees in some offices were hazed with tales of secret UFO research, potentially the source of information presented by whistleblowers. Many remain unconvinced by government denials, including lawmakers who are continuing to advocate for more transparency about unexplained sightings, regardless of whether they originate with nonhuman intelligence or are human-made. 'There are so many things being seen by so many people. And if it's a secret block project, you're not flying it over highly populated neighborhoods where everybody can see it, and even these days, have pictures of it,' Stepien said. NUFORC sees wide range of UFO sightings Cases being investigated by NUFORC range from detailed descriptions to brief notes, with some explained by known objects, including balloons, drones and planets or stars. 'We get lots of reports of balloons and things like that that we can say that's clearly a balloon, or that's a drone, or it's an airplane or whatever it is,' Stepien said. Stepien said around 3 percent of the reports the group gets end up being of high interest. 'The dramatic ones are kind of the cases where you say somebody saw a giant triangle floating over their house the size of a tennis court or a football field,' he said. 'And we get those reports fairly regularly, things that can't possibly be mistaken for something else.' The group notes that reports include an array of shapes, including triangles, discs, orbs, cigars and forms that appear to change. Many of the sightings include reports of craft displaying agility or other capabilities not expected from human technology. Going forward, Stepien said the group hopes to continue to collect reports of sightings and to get more transparency from the government, especially data collected from advanced technology. 'The government certainly has the good stuff,' he said. 'These days with cellphones and things like that, we're starting to get some nice videos and things, but we don't have high resolution cameras and forward-looking infrared and that kind of stuff.'
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘Space ice' found in comets isn't much like water on Earth after all
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, BGR may receive an affiliate commission. Space is cold, and research has shown time and time again that space ice is prevalent throughout the universe. However, despite sharing a similar name to the ice we find in glaciers or even in our freezers here on Earth, new research says that frozen water found on icy planets, comets, and even in the dust that sails through space is very different from the ice you might put your soda over. For starters, despite looking like a shapeless solid, ice is actually made up of multiple nanoscopic crystals, all of which are only a few billionths of a meter across, if that. So, what makes Earth ice and space ice so different? Well, according to researchers, Earth ice is made up of orderly lattice crystal designs. These all showcase the six-fold symmetry of snowflakes in the underlying structure. Today's Top Deals XGIMI Prime Day deals feature the new MoGo 4 and up to 42% off smart projectors Best deals: Tech, laptops, TVs, and more sales Best Ring Video Doorbell deals But we've long believed that space ice has a different structure. Instead, because of the near-vacuum conditions of space, the water frozen there likely lacked the energy needed to form these orderly lattices. Scientists believed they were most likely made up of random arrangements of crystals. But new research is challenging this perspective. Instead of being made up entirely of random crystallized structures, the researchers found that in order for the ice they made in their tests to truly resemble that of space ice, they had to give it some structure — roughly 20% of the overall structure. But what is even more intriguing is that when warmed slightly, they found that the crystals retain the structure seen in their original designs. This suggests that the ice holds onto some of its memory of the past, which could help greatly in future studies of frozen water in space. It could also fundamentally change our understanding of how life came to Earth, something that researchers have long theorized happened as amino acids hitched rides in the frozen water of comets. But if space ice retains some of the structure of its original design, then the empty places for those acids to grow and live would be even more scarce than they was previously thought to be. Of course, the study is far from definitive, and further research will need to be done to confirm these findings. For now, though, they raise some interesting questions about what we think we know about how the universe and space ice actually works. More Top Deals Memorial Day security camera deals: Reolink's unbeatable sale has prices from $29.98 See the
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
How a Robinhood co-founder launched a space-lasers startup
Baiju Bhatt became a billionaire after co-founding Robinhood, the zero-commission online brokerage that became synonymous with the 2021 meme-stock craze. His ambitions for his next act may be more outlandish. Aetherflux, the company Bhatt launched after leaving Robinhood last year, is trying to turn a science fiction idea that Isaac Asimov first sketched out in 1941 into commercial reality: capturing solar power in space and then beaming it down to earth. Others — including NASA, where Bhatt's father worked — have pursued the idea before and given up. Bhatt's twist on Asimov's concept is to deploy a constellation of small satellites in low Earth orbit, from which to transmit power to small ground stations using infrared lasers. He aims to reach parts of the globe where traditional delivery of power or fuel is difficult, expensive, or dangerous. Bhatt has identified the US Department of Defense as a possible early adopter, and as Aetherflux plays into President Donald Trump's 'energy dominance' agenda, it has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from the Pentagon. Aetherflux has raised another $50 million from more traditional startup funders including Andreessen Horowitz, Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Bhatt's Robinhood co-founder, Vlad Tenev. It will take another 'hundreds of millions, if not billions' to put Bhatt's plan into action, he acknowledges, but he is planning to launch a 'demonstration mission' within a year. The Stanford physics graduate is leaning into his startup's sci-fi image, decorating one wall of its offices in San Carlos, California, with a madcap, retro-futurist mural featuring bionic presidents, a space-suited bald eagle, and a giant American flag against a galactic backdrop. The country's capitalist economy, where entrepreneurs are willing to put risk capital on the line for a venture like his, 'sets America apart,' Bhatt believes. And he hopes to let more people 'live out their dreams of the cosmos.' His pursuit of the resources needed to bring an unproven concept to life is an extreme example of the task facing most startup founders. Here's how Bhatt's trying to 'yank [Asimov's idea] from the pages of science fiction and manifest it in the world.' Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson: Can we start with the space lasers? This sounds like sci-fi. What makes you think it might work? Baiju Bhatt: This was the meaty challenge that I was looking to sink my teeth into [after Robinhood]. My motive was to take something which looked and felt like science fiction, and try to make it a science reality — and to build a business in the process. Our approach from the beginning has been: How can we [develop] this capability with existing building blocks, without needing to have individual scientific breakthroughs? It means that most, if not all, of the components for our demonstration mission are either commercially available or are modifications to things that are commercially available. How do you raise funds for something that has been tried in the past and failed, which might take years to pay off? I say pretty often that space is hard and space is expensive. And one of the fun parts about this is just being very open and direct about [the fact that] we're working on a very, very difficult problem. That being said, I've done this before. I've built a pretty big company. And this is a big and bold mission that we're pursuing. So while our path towards getting there is going to be challenging, and it's going to be a long-term one, we're trying to tackle one of the foundational pillars of the economy. Even putting aside the financial opportunity, this has the potential to be transformative and those things tend to be pretty interesting. If you can make them happen, they change the world. What did you learn from Robinhood that has been valuable to you in founding Aetherflux? A part of what makes this intellectually compelling to me is that it's not the exact same thing. Because why does a person go from finance to starting a space company? It's because you want a challenge. There's a lot of parts of building a company that are transferable, like team-building, recruiting, fundraising, communications, telling the story of the company, making sure that there are clear goals in mind, and orienting people towards a mission. There's also a magic and a camaraderie that comes from working together on a small team on something. Hopefully, when people join a company like this, they want to do the work that is going to be some of the most exciting, impactful work of their life. And the way that you get people to sign up for something like this is you speak to that. You say, 'If we can do this, we change the way that humans interact with space.' What percentage chance do you put on this working out? Will it be successful? Hopefully. Are we going to work hard to make it successful? Yes. Personally, looking at those 10 to 15 years [at Robinhood], what is the thing I'm trying to relive? The thing I'm chasing is the uncertainty, working on something where not a lot of other people are working on it. But I, in my mind's eye, have an inclination that this is the right thing to do, and that the path to doing it is the way that I foresee it's going to play out. And [looking back and asking myself], 'How did you, Baiju, solve the problem along the way, so that you found your way out of the uncertainty?' I miss the times when I didn't know, and then I did know. Tell me about the wall art. It's 20 feet tall, and it's probably 80 feet wide. The concept behind this is the painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware. But instead of on a boat, I wanted him crossing the Van Allen [radiation] belt on a satellite. Then I wanted to have the founding fathers or important US presidents, shirtless and ripped. We've got Nikola Tesla, Thomas Jefferson, a hairless cat, George Washington, and Abe Lincoln. Over here we have a T-Rex. That's Ben Franklin, with a Chippendales kind of thing going on. There's Teddy Roosevelt, there's [Ronald] Reagan. That's me — and Tupac [Shakur]. Arizona-based Solestial raised $17 million in May to continue funding its space-based solar panel technology, indicating there is strong investor interest in the once sci-fi concept. Space energy experts have recently warned US lawmakers that the nation could fall behind China in the race to harvest solar power from space. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
