The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is an expendable medium-lift launch vehicle designed and operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It is India's third-generation launch vehicle and the first Indian launch vehicle to incorporate liquid-fueled stages. The development of the PSLV began in the 1980s to provide India with an indigenous capability to launch its Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites into Sun-synchronous orbits (SSO). Before the PSLV's advent in 1993, this service was commercially available only from Russia. The vehicle's first developmental flight occurred on September 20, 1993, which was a failure, but its first fully successful mission followed on October 15, 1994, deploying the IRS-P2 satellite.
The PSLV works as a four-stage rocket that alternates between solid and liquid propulsion systems. The first and third stages are solid-fueled, while the second and fourth stages are liquid-fueled. The second stage uses the Vikas engine, which is a derivative of France's Viking engine. The vehicle is capable of placing up to 1,750 kg of payload into a 600 km SSO and can also launch small satellites into Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO). The PSLV has several variants, including the standard PSLV-G, the PSLV-CA ("Core Alone") which omits the strap-on boosters, and the more powerful PSLV-XL which uses six stretched strap-on boosters with 12 tonne propellant loads.
The PSLV is often called the "workhorse of ISRO" due to its reliability and versatility, having launched landmark missions like Chandrayaan-1 in 2008 and the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) in 2013. It connects to other Indian launch vehicles like the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), which is designed for heavier payloads into GTO. Recently, the PSLV program has faced scrutiny following back-to-back failures of the PSLV-C61 mission in May 2025 and the PSLV-C62 mission in January 2026, both attributed to anomalies in the third stage. Following these setbacks, the anomaly has been resolved, and the vendor for certain components was changed, though the core four-stage mechanism remains the same. The production and operation of the PSLV are also being transitioned to private industry through a contract signed by NewSpace India Limited with a conglomerate led by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and Larsen & Toubro for five PSLV-XL vehicles.