India's space programme began with Aryabhata, a satellite launched on a Soviet rocket in 1975, and its first home-built rocket failed in 1979. In the five decades since, ISRO has reached the Moon, Mars and the Sun, set a world record with 104 satellites on one launch, and learned as much from its failures as from its successes.
Every ISRO mission matters. These 46 are the ones that changed the story — each a first, a record, a hard lesson or a comeback.
46 milestones from 1975 to 2026: 30 successes, 12 failures, 3 partial successes and 1 other milestone.
2020–2026 · Moon landing and scale-up
Failures of new rockets and stages came alongside the programme's biggest achievements: a soft landing near the Moon's south pole, a mission to the Sun, in-orbit docking, a NASA partnership, record-heavy commercial launches and India's first private orbital rocket. Two PSLV failures in a row, in 2025 and 2026, dented the workhorse's reputation.
GSLV-F18 · NVS-03 navigation satellite
30 Oct 2026 · GSLV · Success
NVS-03 is the third second-generation NavIC satellite, carrying an Indian-made atomic clock and broadcasting on the L1 band used by most smartphones. It follows NVS-02, which was stranded in 2025, in rebuilding the constellation.
Comeback from GSLV-F15.
What went wrong: NVS-02 reached its transfer orbit but could not fire its own engine to climb to its slot.
Why: The command to open the oxidiser pyro valve never arrived — contacts in both the main and backup connector paths had most likely come loose.
What fixed it: ISRO added redundancy and checks to spacecraft pyro systems, first flown on CMS-03 in November 2025 and then on NVS-03.
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GSLV-F17 · EOS-05 (GISAT-1A)
4 Sep 2026 · GSLV · Success
Five years after GISAT-1 was lost on GSLV-F10, its successor EOS-05 reached orbit on GSLV-F17. Once in its geosynchronous slot, it can watch the same part of India continuously, imaging floods, cyclones and fires many times a day rather than once every few days.
Comeback from GSLV-F10.
What went wrong: GSLV-F10’s cryogenic upper stage did not ignite, and GISAT-1 was lost.
Why: Pressure dropped in the liquid-hydrogen tank because of a leak in its vent-and-relief valve.
What fixed it: The valve was redesigned; GSLV flew successfully again from 2023 and EOS-05, GISAT-1’s replacement, reached orbit in 2026.
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Vikram-1 · India's first private orbital rocket
18 Jul 2026 · Vikram-1 · Success · First private Indian orbital launch
Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace launched Vikram-1 from Sriharikota on Mission Aagaman, the first time a privately built Indian rocket reached orbit. ISRO provided the launch site and support; the rocket was designed and built by the company.
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PSLV-C62 · Second PSLV failure in a row
12 Jan 2026 · PSLV · Failure
Near the end of its third-stage burn the PSLV again lost chamber pressure and veered off course. The EOS-N1 (Anvesha) satellite and 15 co-passenger payloads were lost. Two consecutive failures of the same stage led ISRO to set up a failure-analysis committee; until it flies again, the PSLV's long record of reliability is under review.
LVM3-M6 · BlueBird Block-2, heaviest payload from India
24 Dec 2025 · LVM3 · Success · Heaviest payload launched from India
LVM3 placed AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird Block-2 — a 6,100 kg satellite designed to connect directly to ordinary mobile phones — into a roughly 520 km orbit. It was the first dedicated commercial launch for a US customer and the heaviest payload ever launched from Indian soil.
LVM3-M5 · CMS-03, India's heaviest communication satellite
2 Nov 2025 · LVM3 · Success
CMS-03, also known as GSAT-7R, is a multi-band military communication satellite for the Indian Navy, replacing GSAT-7 (Rukmini). At about 4,400 kg it was the heaviest satellite launched from India into geosynchronous transfer orbit.
GSLV-F16 · NISAR, the NASA–ISRO radar satellite
30 Jul 2025 · GSLV · Success · First NASA–ISRO joint satellite
NISAR carries two radars — an L-band radar from NASA and an S-band radar from ISRO — and a 12-metre mesh antenna. From sun-synchronous orbit it maps almost all of Earth's land and ice every 12 days, measuring ground movement of a centimetre or less to study earthquakes, landslides, glaciers and crops. It was the first GSLV launch into a sun-synchronous orbit.
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PSLV-C61 · Third-stage failure, EOS-09 lost
18 May 2025 · PSLV · Failure
A drop in chamber pressure in the PSLV's solid third stage left the rocket short of orbit and the EOS-09 radar imaging satellite was lost. It was only the PSLV's third failure in more than 60 flights.
GSLV-F15 · 100th launch from Sriharikota, NVS-02 stranded
29 Jan 2025 · GSLV · Rocket OK · satellite stranded
The 100th launch from Sriharikota went perfectly and placed the NVS-02 navigation satellite in its transfer orbit. But valves on the satellite's own engine did not open, so it could not raise itself to its geosynchronous slot and remains in an elongated orbit, unusable for NavIC.
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PSLV-C60 · SpaDeX docking experiment
30 Dec 2024 · PSLV · Success · 4th nation to dock in orbit
Two small satellites, Chaser and Target, launched together, drifted apart and were brought back together. On 16 January 2025 they docked, making India the fourth country to achieve docking in space after the United States, Russia and China — a skill needed for the planned Bharatiya Antariksh Station and future Moon missions.
TV-D1 · Gaganyaan crew-escape test
21 Oct 2023 · Test vehicle · Success
A single-stage test rocket carried an uncrewed Gaganyaan crew module to about 12 km, where the crew-escape system fired, pulled the module away and parachuted it into the Bay of Bengal. It proved the system that would save astronauts if a launch goes wrong.
Gaganyaan mission status · The Gaganyaan story
PSLV-C57 · Aditya-L1, India's mission to the Sun
2 Sep 2023 · PSLV · Success · India's first solar observatory
After four orbit-raising burns and a four-month cruise, Aditya-L1 entered a halo orbit around the Sun–Earth L1 point, about 1.5 million km from Earth, on 6 January 2024. From there it watches the Sun without ever being blocked by Earth, studying the corona, solar flares and the solar wind.
Full Aditya-L1 journey
LVM3-M4 · Chandrayaan-3 lands near the south pole
14 Jul 2023 · LVM3 · Success · First landing near the lunar south pole
Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander touched down on 23 August 2023 at 18:04 IST. India became the fourth country to soft-land on the Moon — after the Soviet Union, the United States and China — and the first to land near the south pole. The Pragyan rover drove about 100 metres and confirmed sulphur in the lunar soil.
The landing site was named Shiv Shakti Point and 23 August is now National Space Day. The propulsion module was later moved from lunar orbit back towards Earth, where it remains in a high Earth orbit; no current public orbital elements exist for it, so its position cannot be plotted.
Comeback from LVM3-M1.
What went wrong: The Vikram lander crashed during its final descent.
Why: Engine thrust during braking was higher than expected; errors built up faster than the guidance software could correct, and the landing zone was only about 500 m across.
What fixed it: Chandrayaan-3 got a far bigger landing zone (4 km × 2.4 km), stronger legs, more fuel, extra sensors and software designed to cope with failures instead of a perfect flight.
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SSLV-D2 · Small rocket succeeds
10 Feb 2023 · SSLV · Success
Six months after the first failure, SSLV's second flight placed EOS-07 and two co-passenger satellites in their planned orbit. A third successful flight in 2024 completed its development, and the rocket's technology is being transferred to Indian industry.
Comeback from SSLV-D1.
What went wrong: SSLV released its satellites into an unstable orbit, and they re-entered.
Why: Vibration at second-stage separation upset the accelerometers; the software declared them faulty and switched to a backup mode that cut the final burn short.
What fixed it: The separation system and the sensor-failure logic were changed; SSLV-D2 placed its satellites correctly six months later.
LVM3-M2 · 36 OneWeb satellites
23 Oct 2022 · LVM3 · Success
In the early hours of 23 October, LVM3 carried 36 OneWeb internet satellites, about 5.8 tonnes in total, into low Earth orbit — its first commercial mission. OneWeb had turned to ISRO after launches on Russian rockets were cancelled; a second batch of 36 followed in March 2023.
SSLV-D1 · New small rocket, wrong orbit
7 Aug 2022 · SSLV · Failure
The Small Satellite Launch Vehicle, built to launch small satellites cheaply and quickly, reached space on its first flight. But a sensor fault switched its guidance into a backup mode and the final stage released EOS-02 and the student-built AzaadiSAT into an unstable orbit, where they soon re-entered.
GSLV-F10 · Cryogenic stage fails to ignite
12 Aug 2021 · GSLV · Failure
The first two stages performed normally, but the cryogenic upper stage did not ignite because of a pressure drop in its liquid-hydrogen tank. EOS-03 (GISAT-1), meant to watch India continuously from geostationary orbit, was lost. Its replacement, EOS-05, finally flew in 2026.
EOS-05 tracker
2010–2019 · Into deep space
Two GSLV losses in 2010 opened the decade at its lowest point. By its end, India had built its own cryogenic engine, reached Mars on the first attempt, launched its own navigation constellation and an observatory, and set a world record of 104 satellites on one rocket.
LVM3-M1 · Chandrayaan-2
22 Jul 2019 · LVM3 · Partial
Chandrayaan-2 reached lunar orbit and released the Vikram lander with the Pragyan rover inside. During the final descent in the early hours of 7 September 2019, Vikram deviated from its planned path and crashed on the surface.
The orbiter was not affected. It is still mapping the Moon from orbit, and it acted as the communications relay for Chandrayaan-3 four years later.
What happened to Chandrayaan-2
PSLV-C39 · Heat shield fails to open
31 Aug 2017 · PSLV · Failure
The payload fairing — the nose cone that protects the satellite through the atmosphere — did not separate, so the IRNSS-1H navigation satellite stayed trapped inside it and could not reach its orbit. It was the PSLV's first failure since its 1993 debut, ending a run of 39 consecutive successes.
PSLV-C37 · 104 satellites in one launch
15 Feb 2017 · PSLV · Success · World record
PSLV-C37 deployed India's Cartosat-2D, two Indian nanosatellites and 101 foreign satellites — 96 of them from the United States — in about 18 minutes. It held the record for the most satellites on a single launch until a SpaceX rideshare beat it in 2021.
PSLV-C30 · AstroSat, India's space observatory
28 Sep 2015 · PSLV · Success
AstroSat carries five instruments that study the same object in ultraviolet, visible and X-ray light at once. It is still operating, in a low, near-equatorial orbit — which is why it never rises above the horizon for observers in northern India.
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LVM3-X · Test flight and crew-capsule re-entry
18 Dec 2014 · LVM3 · Success
The first flight of ISRO's heaviest rocket, then called GSLV Mk III, was suborbital, with a dummy upper stage. It released CARE, an unmanned crew-module prototype, which re-entered the atmosphere and splashed down near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands — an early step towards Gaganyaan.
CARE in the Gaganyaan story
GSLV-D5 · India's cryogenic engine works
5 Jan 2014 · GSLV · Success · Indigenous cryogenic stage
Almost four years after GSLV-D3, the redesigned Indian cryogenic stage fired for its full duration and placed GSAT-14 in its planned orbit. Mastering cryogenic propulsion freed ISRO from buying engines abroad and opened the path to heavier geostationary satellites and, later, human spaceflight.
Comeback from GSLV-D3.
What went wrong: India’s first home-built cryogenic stage shut down about a second after ignition.
Why: The stage’s fuel booster turbopump stopped running.
What fixed it: The turbopump and related hardware were redesigned and ground-tested for almost four years before GSLV-D5 flew.
PSLV-C25 · Mangalyaan launches for Mars
5 Nov 2013 · PSLV · Success · Mars on the first attempt
The Mars Orbiter Mission was too heavy for the PSLV to send straight to Mars, so it spent a month in Earth orbit raising its path with six engine burns before heading off on 1 December. It entered Mars orbit on 24 September 2014 — making India the first country to succeed on its first attempt, and the first Asian nation to reach Mars orbit.
Built for six months, it worked for about eight years until contact was lost in 2022. Its reported cost of about ₹450 crore was famously less than many Hollywood space films.
Full Mangalyaan journey
PSLV-C22 · NavIC begins
1 Jul 2013 · PSLV · Success
IRNSS-1A was the first satellite of India's own regional navigation system, designed to give accurate positioning over India and 1,500 km around it without relying on GPS. The constellation was named NavIC in 2016 and is now being refreshed with second-generation NVS satellites.
The full NavIC story · Is NavIC working right now?
GSLV-F06 · Second loss in a year
25 Dec 2010 · GSLV · Failure
Flying with a Russian cryogenic stage, this GSLV broke apart about a minute after launch when connectors to the strap-on boosters failed, and the GSAT-5P satellite was destroyed. After six flights with only two clean successes, the GSLV earned a reputation as ISRO's "naughty boy".
GSLV-D3 · Indigenous cryogenic stage fails
15 Apr 2010 · GSLV · Failure
The first flight of India's home-built cryogenic upper stage — liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, chilled to below −180 °C — ended when its fuel booster turbopump stopped shortly after ignition. GSAT-4 was lost. Cryogenic engines are among the hardest rocket technologies; at the time only a handful of countries had mastered them.
1990–2009 · The PSLV era
ISRO's workhorse arrived. After a failed debut, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle became one of the most reliable rockets in the world, opened a commercial business carrying foreign satellites, and sent India to the Moon. The heavier GSLV, needed for geostationary satellites, had a much rougher start.
PSLV-C11 · Chandrayaan-1 goes to the Moon
22 Oct 2008 · PSLV · Success · India's first Moon mission
India's first mission beyond Earth orbit reached the Moon in November 2008 and released the Moon Impact Probe, which struck near the south pole on 14 November. NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper on board detected the signature of water molecules on the lunar surface — one of the decade's headline discoveries.
The orbiter fell silent on 29 August 2009, after about 10 months of its planned two years.
Full Chandrayaan-1 journey
PSLV-C9 · 10 satellites on one launch
28 Apr 2008 · PSLV · Success · Then a world record
PSLV-C9 placed Cartosat-2A, IMS-1 and eight foreign nanosatellites into orbit in a single flight — at the time the most satellites ever launched together. It was a preview of the PSLV's later talent for rideshare missions.
PSLV-C7 · First capsule back from orbit
10 Jan 2007 · PSLV · Success
The Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE-1) spent 12 days in orbit, then fired a retro-rocket, survived re-entry behind a heat shield and splashed down by parachute in the Bay of Bengal, where the Coast Guard recovered it. It was ISRO's first test of technologies needed for bringing anything — eventually astronauts — home from space.
GSLV-F02 · Destroyed over Sriharikota
10 Jul 2006 · GSLV · Failure
Seconds after lift-off one of the GSLV's four liquid strap-on boosters lost thrust, the rocket veered off course and range safety destroyed it over the Bay of Bengal along with the INSAT-4C communication satellite.
PSLV-C4 · Kalpana-1 weather satellite
12 Sep 2002 · PSLV · Success
The first PSLV to carry a satellite towards geostationary orbit launched METSAT-1, India's first dedicated weather satellite. After the Columbia shuttle disaster in February 2003 it was renamed Kalpana-1 in memory of Indian-born astronaut Kalpana Chawla.
GSLV-D1 · First GSLV, orbit falls short
18 Apr 2001 · GSLV · Partial
The first Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle used a cryogenic upper stage bought from Russia. It reached orbit, but a shortfall in performance left the experimental GSAT-1 below its planned transfer orbit, and the satellite could not reach its geostationary slot. ISRO counts the flight as a success for the rocket; the satellite's mission was lost.
PSLV-C2 · First foreign satellites
26 May 1999 · PSLV · Success
Alongside India's Oceansat-1, this PSLV carried South Korea's KITSAT-3 and Germany's DLR-Tubsat — the first foreign satellites launched by an Indian rocket. It marked the start of ISRO's commercial launch business, now run by NewSpace India Limited.
PSLV-D2 · The workhorse is born
15 Oct 1994 · PSLV · Success · First PSLV success
The second PSLV placed the IRS-P2 remote-sensing satellite into a sun-synchronous orbit. From here the four-stage PSLV — alternating solid and liquid stages — became ISRO's standard rocket for Earth-observation, navigation and science missions.
Comeback from PSLV-D1.
What went wrong: The first PSLV lost attitude control at stage separation and crashed into the sea.
Why: An error in the guidance software’s control logic.
What fixed it: The software was corrected and tested far more extensively in simulation; PSLV-D2 reached orbit.
PSLV-D1 · Debut failure
20 Sep 1993 · PSLV · Failure
The first PSLV flew well through its first stage, but a software error in the guidance system caused an attitude problem during stage separation, and the IRS-1E satellite fell into the sea. It would be 24 years before the PSLV failed again.
ASLV-D3 · ASLV finally works
20 May 1992 · ASLV · Success
On its third attempt the ASLV placed the SROSS-C science satellite in orbit. The orbit was lower than planned and the satellite re-entered within weeks, but the flight validated the strap-on and control technologies that the PSLV would rely on.
Comeback from ASLV-D1 and D2.
What went wrong: D1’s core stage never ignited after the boosters burned out; D2 lost control and broke up.
Why: Gaps in stage-ignition reliability and in the vehicle’s control at booster separation.
What fixed it: ISRO overhauled the ASLV’s ignition, control and guidance systems; lessons also went into the PSLV.
1975–1989 · Beginnings
India's first satellites flew on other countries' rockets while ISRO learned to build its own. The first home-grown rocket, SLV-3, failed on its debut, flew a year later, and made India the seventh nation able to put a satellite into orbit by itself. The decade ended with two ASLV failures in a row — the first hard lesson of many.
IRS-1A · Start of India's Earth-observation fleet
17 Mar 1988 · Vostok · Success
Launched from the Soviet Union, IRS-1A was India's first operational remote-sensing satellite, photographing crops, forests, water and land use from a sun-synchronous orbit. Every Indian imaging satellite since — Cartosat, Resourcesat, Oceansat and the EOS series — descends from it.
Cartosat-3 live
ASLV-D1 and D2 · Two failures in a row
1987 & 1988 · ASLV · Failure
The Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle added two strap-on boosters to SLV-3 to carry heavier payloads. Its first flight on 24 March 1987 failed when the core stage did not ignite after the boosters burned out; the second, on 13 July 1988, broke up after losing control. Together they forced a deep review of ISRO's guidance and control systems.
Rakesh Sharma · First Indian in space
3 Apr 1984 · Soyuz T-11 · Milestone · First Indian in space
Indian Air Force pilot Rakesh Sharma flew to the Soviet Salyut 7 space station aboard Soyuz T-11 and spent nearly eight days in orbit. Asked by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi how India looked from space, he answered "Saare jahan se achha". India's next human spaceflight is the Gaganyaan programme.
Gaganyaan mission status · The Gaganyaan story
INSAT-1B · INSAT system starts working
30 Aug 1983 · Space Shuttle · Success
Deployed from NASA's Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-8, INSAT-1B worked for its full design life. It brought national TV broadcasting to villages, linked remote telephone exchanges and sent the weather pictures still associated with the evening forecast. The INSAT and GSAT fleets that followed grew from it.
Comeback from INSAT-1A.
What went wrong: INSAT-1A was abandoned five months into a seven-year mission.
Why: Its solar array and a stabilising boom did not deploy fully, and a faulty valve drained attitude-control fuel; it used the rest trying to regain its lock on Earth.
What fixed it: INSAT-1B, the next satellite of the same series, deployed properly and served its full design life.
Track today's ISRO fleet
INSAT-1A · Lost within months
10 Apr 1982 · Delta · Failure
India's first multipurpose satellite — TV broadcasting, telephone links and weather pictures in one spacecraft — was launched by a US Delta rocket. It suffered a series of problems in orbit, ran out of attitude-control fuel and was abandoned in September 1982, barely five months into a planned seven-year life.
APPLE · First Indian communication satellite
19 Jun 1981 · Ariane · Success
APPLE (Ariane Passenger Payload Experiment) rode free on a European Ariane test flight from French Guiana and reached geostationary orbit, where it relayed TV and radio signals for two years. It is best remembered for a photograph of engineers moving the satellite on a bullock cart during testing — a picture that still sums up how far ISRO has come.
SLV-3 E2 · India reaches orbit on its own
18 Jul 1980 · SLV-3 · Success · India reaches orbit on its own rocket
Less than a year after the failure, SLV-3 placed the 35 kg Rohini RS-1 satellite into low Earth orbit from Sriharikota. India joined the handful of countries able to launch a satellite on their own rocket — the seventh by most counts, after the Soviet Union, the United States, France, Japan, China and the United Kingdom (ISRO's own page says sixth).
Comeback from SLV-3 E1.
What went wrong: The rocket lost control during its second stage and fell into the Bay of Bengal.
Why: A valve in the second-stage control system malfunctioned, so the stage could not steer.
What fixed it: The control system was corrected and re-qualified; the next SLV-3 reached orbit 11 months later.
SLV-3 E1 · First Indian rocket fails
10 Aug 1979 · SLV-3 · Failure
The first experimental flight of SLV-3, India's own four-stage solid rocket, lost control during the second stage and fell into the Bay of Bengal with its Rohini satellite. The project was led by A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, who later recalled facing the press after the failure while ISRO chairman Satish Dhawan took the blame himself.
Aryabhata · India's first satellite
19 Apr 1975 · Kosmos-3M · Success · India's first satellite
Built by ISRO in Bengaluru and launched from the Soviet Union, Aryabhata was a 360 kg experiment in X-ray astronomy and solar physics. A power failure ended its experiments after a few days, but the satellite proved Indian engineers could design and build a working spacecraft.
It re-entered Earth's atmosphere in 1992. Its picture appeared on the Indian two-rupee note.
India's first satellite was Aryabhata, built by ISRO and launched on 19 April 1975 on a Soviet Kosmos-3M rocket. The first satellite launched on an Indian rocket was Rohini RS-1, carried by SLV-3 on 18 July 1980.
The best known are Chandrayaan-1 (water on the Moon, 2008), Mangalyaan (Mars on the first attempt, 2013–14), PSLV-C37 (104 satellites in one launch, 2017), Chandrayaan-3 (first landing near the lunar south pole, 2023), Aditya-L1 (solar observatory, 2023), SpaDeX (in-orbit docking, 2025) and NISAR with NASA (2025).
Notable failures include SLV-3 E1 (1979), ASLV-D1 and D2 (1987–88), PSLV-D1 (1993), GSLV-F02 (2006), GSLV-D3 and F06 (2010), PSLV-C39 (2017), GSLV-F10 (2021), SSLV-D1 (2022), PSLV-C61 (2025) and PSLV-C62 (2026). Chandrayaan-2's lander crashed in 2019, though its orbiter still works.
PSLV is ISRO's four-stage workhorse, used mostly for satellites in low and sun-synchronous orbits. GSLV adds a cryogenic upper stage to carry heavier satellites towards geosynchronous orbit. LVM3 (formerly GSLV Mk III) is ISRO's heaviest rocket, used for Chandrayaan-2 and 3, large commercial payloads and, in future, Gaganyaan astronauts.
Many ISRO satellites launched in this timeline are still in orbit. You can follow AstroSat, Aditya-L1, NISAR, EOS-05, the NavIC satellites and the Chandrayaan-3 propulsion module on SatelliteTracker.in, where positions are estimated from public orbital data.