PSLV-C62 Failure Delays Space Power Grid Vision
- By Thetripurapost Desk, Sriharikota
- Jan 12, 2026
- 655
The rising Sun over the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota seemed to herald the dawn of a digital revolution beyond Earth—an audacious attempt to wire the cosmos itself. Yet, just eight minutes after liftoff, that vision collapsed under the unforgiving laws of orbital mechanics.
At precisely 10:18 am IST, ISRO’s PSLV-C62 thundered skyward, carrying what was intended to be the cornerstone of an unprecedented space-based digital infrastructure. The payload—a 6-kilowatt orbital data hub—was conceived as the foundational “server room” of a future global space economy, the first block in a towering celestial grid.
The launch unfolded flawlessly through its initial phases. The first two stages performed with textbook precision, sending the vehicle cleanly through Earth’s atmosphere and out over the Indian Ocean. But as the rocket entered its third stage, the ascent was abruptly marred by a severe performance anomaly. Inside mission control, the smooth, predictable arc on tracking displays began to drift ominously off course.
What followed was a moment of collective suspense. Engineers watched in silence as the launch vehicle, locked in a terminal contest with physics, deviated irreversibly from its intended trajectory. The mission’s fate was sealed.
The MOI-1 payload—envisioned as a proof-of-concept for a revolutionary distributed power and computing grid in space—never reached its planned 500-kilometre orbit. The dream of establishing the world’s first orbital data and power hub was cut short before it could take form in the vacuum above.
The setback delivers a hard blow to the ambitious roadmap unveiled by Hyderabad-based startups TakeMe2Space and Eon Space Labs. Their proposal sought to create a sovereign Indian “power bank in orbit,” enabling small, energy-constrained satellites to plug into a shared infrastructure capable of running massive AI models in real time.
Had it succeeded, the platform would have marked a paradigm shift—propelling India from a provider of satellite launch and signal relay services to the backbone utility of the space economy itself, supplying computation and power as a service beyond Earth.
Instead, what was meant to be the birth of the world’s first orbital server room ended in silence. The debris may have scattered unseen across the ocean, but the questions it leaves behind are immediate and urgent.
Yet, the architects of the mission remain undeterred. The failure underscores a sobering truth: while humanity is ready to redefine the geography of the internet, access to the stars remains brutally selective. Vision alone is not enough—the gateway to orbit demands perfection, every single time.