India’s first private orbital rocket lifts off today, 46 years after SLV-3

India’s first privately developed orbital-class rocket is scheduled to lift off at 11.30 am on Saturday, marking a new chapter in the country’s commercial space industry. Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 will fly from the first launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre-Sriharikota Range under the mission name Aagaman — the Hyderabad company’s maiden orbital test flight.

The launch falls exactly 46 years after ISRO’s own first rocket, the Satellite Launch Vehicle-3, lifted off from the same spaceport on 18 July 1980 and placed the Rohini satellite RS-1 into orbit, making India the sixth nation with independent satellite-launch capability. The 22-metre, 17-tonne SLV-3 could carry 40 kg payloads to low Earth orbit; Vikram-1 matches its 22-metre height but is a far more advanced seven-storey vehicle built from an all-carbon composite structure with in-house-developed propulsion, including high-thrust solid-fuel boosters and 3D-printed engines.

The mission is a significant commercial marker for Skyroot, which became India’s first spacetech unicorn in May this year after a $60 million funding round led by GIC and Sherpalo Ventures pushed its valuation past $1.1 billion. ‘This is the first time a private rocket is standing on the ISRO launchpad,’ said co-founder and CEO Pawan Kumar Chandana.

Vikram-1 is built to carry satellites of up to 350 kg to low Earth orbit, with Saturday’s test flight targeting a 450 km orbit at a 60-degree inclination. The launch window had originally been set between 12 July and 4 August before being finalised for Saturday; authorities have since issued airspace and maritime notices covering restricted zones along the rocket’s ascent and impact corridor.

Skyroot’s launch control centre has completed final integrated checks on the stacked vehicle, along with interface checks with telemetry ground stations and tracking radars. Chandana described the roughly 16-minute flight as a technology validation mission rather than a commercial one: ‘The first test objective is to get as much data as possible on the health of all the complex systems in actual flight conditions. Till now we have been testing on the ground. This is the first time we’re testing in flight.’

Co-founder and chief operating officer Naga Bharath Daka said the mission represents the work of roughly 1,000 people and more than 400 suppliers. Chandana and Daka, both former ISRO scientists in their late 30s, founded Skyroot in 2018 and built Vikram-1 in nearly four years, a timeline Chandana notes is faster than the eight-to-ten years orbital rocket development usually takes elsewhere. The company had already made history on 18 November 2022, when its suborbital Vikram-S became the first privately built Indian rocket to reach space.

Wikimedia Commons/by ISRO