An Indian rocket carrying 16 loads of equipment and experiments including an earth surveillance satellite went off track after liftoff on Monday in a fresh setback to the workhorse launch vehicle of the Indian Space Research Organisation.

It was a second disappointment for the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle in about eight months, denting its reputation for reliability, with a more than 90% success rate over about 60 past missions, Reuters reported.

The PSLV-C62 lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the island of Sriharikota at 10:18 a.m. (04488 GMT) carrying the EOS-N1 observation satellite and 15 other payloads developed by startups and academic institutions in India and abroad.

The ISRO’s mission control said the rocket performed normally for most of the flight before an unexpected disturbance and deviation from its path.

“The PSLV-C62 mission encountered an anomaly during the end of the PS3 stage. A detailed analysis has been initiated,” ISRO said in a statement, without giving further details on what had gone wrong or where the rocket ended up.

The PSLV has been central to India’s space programme, having launched missions such as Chandrayaan-1 and the Aditya-L1 solar observatory. It also underpins India’s push to open space manufacturing to private industry.

Meta Platform’s messaging unit WhatsApp will likely be subject to tough online content rules targeting illegal and harmful content after it met the user threshold under this regulation, a European Commission spokesperson said on Friday.

WhatsApp had about 51.7 million average monthly active users of its WhatsApp Channels in the European Union in the first six months of 2025, above the 45-million-user threshold set out in the Digital Services Act (DSA), Reuters reported.

The DSA requires such large platforms to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content. Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Google’s YouTube, TikTok, Temu and Microsoft’s Linkedin are some of the companies labelled as very large online platforms under the DSA subject to this requirement.

“So the objective for the Commission here is to check what is actually private messaging which doesn’t fall under the scope of the DSA and what are open channels that act more as a social media platform, this falls under the scope of the DSA,” Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told a daily news briefing.

“So here we would indeed designate potentially WhatsApp for WhatsApp channels and I can confirm that the Commission is actively looking into it and I wouldn’t exclude a future designation,” he said.

WhatsApp was not immediately available to comment.

Companies risk fines of as much as 6% of their global annual revenue for DSA violations.

The offshore energy sector is gearing up for a massive year in 2026, with more than 385 oil and gas pipelines scheduled to commence operations worldwide, including 113 offshore projects, according to GlobalData. While some projects face delays due to political and economic shifts, the largest planned pipelines promise to reshape energy transport across multiple continents.

The longest offshore pipelines set to start in 2026 will mostly transport gas in shallow waters, though major projects will also carry oil in North America. South America, the Middle East, Australia, and Asia will host the five longest pipelines.

Highlights include:

• Vaca Muerta Sur – Argentina: 565km oil pipeline connecting Vaca Muerta oilfields to Punta Colorada export facility. Capacity: 550,000 barrels/day. Cost: $3bn+.

• North Field East – Qatar: 500km gas pipeline expanding LNG production by 50%, including carbon capture facilities. Partners: Shell, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Eni, TotalEnergies.

• Scarborough–Pluto – Australia: 433km LNG pipeline through deep and shallow waters, capacity: 708 million cubic feet/day. Total project cost: $12bn.

• Block B–O Mon – Vietnam: 433km gas pipeline feeding four gas-fired power plants. Capacity: 656 million cubic feet/day.

• Rosmari–Marjoram – Malaysia: 207km deep-water gas pipeline with 800 million cubic feet/day capacity. Operated by Sarawak Shell Berhad.

• Walker Ridge 52–Garden Banks 72 – US: 169km oil pipeline in Gulf of Mexico.

• Darwin Pipeline Duplication – Australia: 123km gas pipeline extending the Bayu Undan export system.

• Texas Gulflink – US: 92km oil pipeline with capacity of 1–2 million barrels/day.

• Aasta Hansteen–Irpa – Norway: 80km gas pipeline operating in extreme deepwater conditions.

• Bintulu–Samalaju – Malaysia: 70km gas pipeline supplying a new 842MW power plant and industrial park.

2026 will see a significant increase in operational offshore pipelines compared to 2025, marking a pivotal year for global energy transport.