Skyroot’s Vikram-1 reaches orbit on India’s first private launch
Hyderabad startup Skyroot Aerospace placed six payloads into a 450-kilometer orbit on its debut flight, a milestone no comparable rocket has matched on a first try.
INDIA — India’s first privately developed orbital rocket reached space on its maiden flight, placing six payloads into a 450-kilometer orbit after lifting off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Sriharikota Island at 1:35 a.m. ET (06:35 UTC) on July 18, 2026. Skyroot Aerospace, the Hyderabad startup that built the Vikram-1, declared the mission, named Aagaman, a full success.
The achievement stands out because first flights of new private orbital rockets rarely succeed. SpaceX needed four attempts before its Falcon 1 reached orbit in 2008, and Rocket Lab’s Electron fell short on its 2017 debut, Ars Technica noted. “On the first attempt, reaching orbit, I never thought it was possible,” said Skyroot cofounder and CEO Pawan Kumar Chandana, who called the flight “nothing short of a suspense movie.” The launch slipped more than half an hour to resolve a last-minute technical problem before the countdown resumed, Ars Technica reported.
Three solid-fueled stages fired in succession, then a fourth stage carrying a cluster of monomethylhydrazine-fueled engines and a 3D-printed liquid engine accelerated to orbital velocity. The rocket reached an orbit inclined 60 degrees to the equator, and U.S. military tracking data confirmed its arrival. Vikram-1 stands about 22 meters tall and can loft up to 350 kilograms to low-Earth orbit, making it somewhat larger than Rocket Lab’s Electron. Built from an all-carbon composite structure and named for physicist Vikram Sarabhai, the father of India’s space program, the vehicle builds on the suborbital Vikram-S that Skyroot flew in 2022. The one anomaly came during separation of the third and fourth stages, when the spent third-stage motor lingered near the fourth stage during a brief coast rather than backing away, Ars Technica reported. The upper stage nonetheless completed its burn and released its payloads, which included Skyroot’s own Earth-observation satellite, a solar-observation CubeSat from Grahaa Space, a robotic-arm debris-capture demonstration from Cosmoserve, technology payloads from Germany’s DCubed, and a lab-grown diamond and an 18-karat gold micro-sculpture Google.
ISRO said it provided “handholding and support” by opening its solid-motor casting and test facilities and one of its two active launch pads to the venture. Pawan Goenka, chairman of the government’s IN-SPACe, said the outcome went “way beyond expectation for the very first orbital launch ever taken by an Indian private company” Google. Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the flight “a defining moment in India’s space journey,” citing the growing role of private firms Google. India’s space economy, valued near $8.4 billion, has expanded since the sector opened to private players in 2020 and now counts more than 400 startups—a base Skyroot’s debut positions to compete for a larger share of the global launch market.