Indian space startup cancels inaugural rocket launch for fourth time

BENGALURU (Reuters) – India’s Agnikul Cosmos canceled a test flight of its first rocket on Tuesday, seconds before its scheduled launch – the fourth such cancellation in the past three months.

Launches of India’s second privately built rocket, and the first using a combination of gas and liquid fuel, have been aborted three times before due to technical problems, including one flight that was canceled about 90 seconds before liftoff.

The launch, scheduled for 5:45 a.m. IST (0015 GMT) on Tuesday, was postponed less than six minutes before liftoff “due to a technical glitch in countdown activities”, and authorities set a new liftoff time of 9:25 a.m.

Just five seconds before liftoff, however, the launch was placed on “temporary hold to check ignition device performance” and then canceled entirely.

The mission was supposed to last two minutes and test the new “semi-cryogenic” engine and 3D printed parts. If successful, it would have represented a technological step forward for India, whose Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has not yet successfully piloted a semi-cryogenic engine, which uses a mixture of liquid and gas as propellant.

Agnikul Cosmos’ Agnibaan rocket is a customizable 2-stage launch vehicle that can carry up to 300 kg (about 660 lb) of payload to orbit at about 700 km altitude (435 miles), the company said. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy can place up to 63,500 kg into low Earth orbit.

India’s first privately developed rocket from Skyroot flew from the ISRO launch site in 2022.

Founded in 2017, Agnikul – whose name is derived from the Hindi and Sanskrit word for fire – runs the country’s first private launch pad and mission control center, while ISRO operates all other launch pads.

(Reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Bengaluru and Sakshi Dayal in New Delhi. Editing by Gerry Doyle)