As the launch window for Vikram-1 remains open from July 12 to August 4, Skyroot Aerospace is preparing for a mission that could mark a historic milestone for India’s private space industry. If successful, the mission will make Skyroot the first private Indian company to place satellites into orbit.
The fully assembled 7-story rocket is stationed at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, where a launch team of around 200 people is overseeing final preparations. The mission, named Aagaman, meaning “arrival” in Sanskrit, aims to deploy multiple customer payloads into low Earth orbit at an altitude of 450 km.
The rocket features 3 solid-fuel lower stages and a restartable liquid-fueled upper stage, allowing it to deploy multiple satellites into different orbits during a single mission.
The payload includes Skyroot’s SCOPE satellite, a technology demonstration from DCUBED, Grahaa Space’s SOLARAS S3 satellite, and Embrace, a robotic arm developed by Cosmoserve Space to capture space debris. The mission will also carry Cosmic Bloom, a floral-shaped artwork from Cosmos Diamonds, and a miniature 18-karat gold rocket created by artist Ajay Kumar Mattewada to honour Vikram Sarabhai, C.V. Raman, and A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
A successful launch would bring Skyroot closer to offering dedicated launches for small satellites requiring precise orbital placement. “The ‘cab’ market is what we want to put our mark on with the Vikram series,” said Pawan Kumar Chandana, Co-founder and CEO of Skyroot Aerospace. “There are very few opportunities for customers to reach customized orbits today.”
Aagaman is the 1st of 3 planned development flights to validate Vikram-1 before commercial operations begin. If the mission succeeds, Skyroot plans to scale production to 1 orbital rocket per month across its 2 Hyderabad campuses.
“The whole idea is to go there as prepared as possible and to attain as much data as possible from the launch, so that we can get to fast-paced, high-frequency launches as soon as possible,” Chandana said.
Skyroot, founded in 2018 by former ISRO engineers Pawan Kumar Chandana and Bharath Daka, became the first private Indian company to launch a rocket into space with Vikram-S in 2022. The company, now valued at $1.1 billion after raising $60 million in May, also plans to develop larger launch vehicles and reusable rocket technology to support the growing commercial space market.
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