The mission was rescheduled earlier in March as fuel leak was detected from the onboard satellite

Union minister of state (MoS) in charge of the department of space Jitendra Singh said on Thursday that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) satellite mission, which faced a technical anomaly, can be rescheduled "some time" later again. The minister said that he spoke at length with ISRO chairperson Dr K Sivan regarding the snag. "Spoke to ISRO chairman Dr. K Sivan and discussed in detail," Singh minister tweeted. "The first two stages went off fine, only after that, there was a difficulty in the cryogenic upper stage ignition. The mission can be re-scheduled some time again," he said.

ISRO suffered a setback on Thursday after its Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) failed to put the GISAT-1 Earth observation satellite (EOS) satellite onto its intended orbit due to a technical anomaly in the cryogenic upper stage minutes after launch.

The GISAT-1 satellite was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh as a part of the GSLV-F10 EOS-03 mission. The 51.70-metre tall rocket blasted off from the second launch pad of the spaceport at 5:43am as scheduled, at the end of the 26-hour countdown. The space agency even noted that rocket performance was normal in the first and second stages.
ISRO's mission control room, however, plunged into silence just before the seventh minute of the flight, when scientists started analysing the flight pattern. Moments later, the space agency finally declared that the mission couldn't be accomplished "as intended".

"GSLV-F10 launch took place today at 0543 Hrs IST as scheduled. Performance of the first and second stages was normal. However, Cryogenic Upper Stage ignition did not happen due to technical anomaly. The mission couldn't be accomplished as intended," the space agency tweeted.

This was the eighth time ISRO was flying the indigenous cryogenic third stage in the vehicle. The GSLV MK-III vehicle carried the Chandrayaan-2 on its first operational flight and will be carrying astronauts to space under the Gaganyaan Mission. All of the four flights, including one sub-orbital flight, of the vehicle, have been successful.

With this mission, ISRO intended to place the Earth observation satellite on the Geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO), a highly elliptic geocentric orbit that almost always serves as an intermediate step for satellites before reaching for their final orbit. After that, the satellite was expected to make its way to the final geostationary orbit with the help of an onboard propulsion system.

ISRO said earlier that the GISAT-1 satellite would obtain spectral signatures for agriculture, forestry, mineralogy, cloud properties, snow and glaciers, and oceanography, enabling researchers back home to gain new insight on a host of issues. If the mission had been accomplished as intended, it would have paved the way for India to monitor and respond to natural disasters and any other short-term events at an alarming pace, according to officials of the space agency familiar with the matter.

Agencies