ISRO on a launch spree. Third launch in three months. PSLV-C62 to launch on Jan-12

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is set to launch its PSLV-C62 mission on January 12, 2026, at 10:17 AM IST from the First Launch Pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), Sriharikota, marking the third ISRO launch since November 2025 and highlighting a sharp rise in launch cadence.

The PSLV-C62 mission will carry EOS-N1 (Anvesha) , an advanced Earth observation satellite designed for applications in border surveillance, agriculture, urban mapping and environmental monitoring . In addition, the mission will deploy around 18 co-passenger satellites from India and international partners. These include AayulSAT , a technology demonstrator for on-orbit refuelling, MOI-1 , a compact AI-enabled Earth imaging satellite, the Indo-Mauritius Joint Satellite (IMJS) , and Kestrel Initial Demonstrator (KID) , a Spanish-built re-entry test capsule, underscoring PSLV’s role as a preferred vehicle for multi-satellite and technology-demonstration missions.

ISRO has conducted eight orbital launches between January 2023 and October 2025 , and the current sequence beginning in November 2025 marks three launches in just over three months , spanning both of ISRO’s operational orbital launch vehicle classes. While the four-stage PSLV is used primarily for small and medium satellites to low Earth and sun-synchronous orbits, the LVM3 heavy-lift launcher is deployed for large communication satellites, deep-space missions and future human spaceflight under the Gaganyaan programme.

The PSLV-C62 launch follows ISRO’s November 2, 2025 mission , when the LVM3-M5 vehicle successfully placed CMS-03 , one of India’s largest and most advanced communication satellites, into geosynchronous transfer orbit, strengthening the country’s high-capacity communications infrastructure. This was followed by ISRO’s December 24, 2025 mission , when the LVM3-M6 vehicle successfully placed the BlueBird Block-2 communication satellite for US-based AST SpaceMobile into low Earth orbit. The mission involved the heaviest payload ever launched by ISRO into LEO and marked the sixth operational flight of LVM3 .

The PSLV programme had earlier witnessed a setback in May 2025 , when PSLV-C61 was declared “mission not accomplished” after the payload failed to reach its intended orbit. Following a detailed failure analysis and corrective measures, subsequent missions were cleared for flight. Despite this anomaly, PSLV remains among the world’s most reliable launch vehicles , having recorded only three failures in more than three decades of operations , a reliability record comparable with other major global launch systems.