India's First Privately Developed Rocket Reaches Orbit on Dramatic Debut Launch
"Fnord666" writes:
"On the first attempt, reaching orbit, I never thought it was possible."
Indian space officials celebrated the debut flight of Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 rocket, India's first fully commercial satellite launcher, as a "grand success" Saturday after an on-target climb into a 280-mile-high orbit following liftoff from an island spaceport in the Bay of Bengal.
The Vikram-1 lifted off from India's primary spaceport on Sriharikota Island at 1:35 am EDT (06:35 UTC) Saturday, around midday at the launch base along India's southeast coast. The launch was delayed more than a half-hour to resolve a last-minute technical problem. The countdown resumed, culminating in the command to ignite Vikram-1's solid-fueled first stage booster to propel the rocket off the launch pad.
Vikram-1 is modest in size compared to India's larger workhorse rockets. Skyroot's rocket stands about 72 feet (22 meters) tall, with the capability to place payloads of up to 770 pounds (350 kilograms) into low-Earth orbit. This makes Vikram-1 somewhat larger than the Electron launch vehicle developed by Rocket Lab, the world's most successful dedicated small satellite launcher.
[...] "We achieved one of the biggest milestones ever in India's space sector-the first private orbital rocket reaching orbit on the very first attempt," said Pawan Kumar Chandana, Skyroot's cofounder and CEO, in remarks to the company's launch team. "It still feels like a dream, and you all made this dream happen."
The first flights of new private orbital-class rockets don't have a great track record. It took SpaceX four tries before reaching orbit with the Falcon 1 rocket for the first time in 2008. Rocket Lab's Electron didn't make it to orbit on its first launch in 2017. Blue Origin beat the odds with the inaugural flight of its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket in 2025, but the company's engineers had previous experience with numerous launches of the smaller New Shepard suborbital rocket.
[...] Skyroot's breakthrough launch comes as India's government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeks to supercharge the country's space industry. India has long had a robust space program, with government-developed rockets such as the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle and the larger LVM3 often attracting commercial customers from the United States and Europe. India became the fourth country to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon in 2023, and is working on an oft-delayed human-rated crew capsule to fly astronauts to low-Earth orbit.
Modi has told the Indian space industry to increase its annual launch total from about five launches per year to 50 before the end of the decade. The prime minister called Chandana and congratulated the Skyroot team after Saturday's launch.
"This is a defining moment in India's space journey," Modi said in a statement . "The growing participation of our private sector is opening new frontiers and accelerating innovation. This achievement will encourage countless youngsters to dream bigger and innovate fearlessly."
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.