The strap-on boosters attached to the side of the GSLV-F06 are suspected to have failed, causing the rocket to veer off course within a minute of its launch. “We suspect the strap-on boosters and not the first stage, which is of credible pedigree and flown several times,” a top space scientist told this newspaper. Two space scientists
ascribed the failure to Isro’s “carelessness”. Dr D. Sasi Kumar, former head of Isro’s Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre, said: “This is the most stupid thing to have happened to a space mission of this magnitude.” Dr Nambi Narayanan, another former director of the LPSC, pointed out that this was the first failure of its kind in Isro’s history.