Here's What the Skyroot Launch Looked Like Behind the Scenes

Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 successfully reached orbit on its maiden flight on the 18th of July, 2026, becoming India’s first privately developed orbital launch vehicle and making the country only the third after the United States and China to achieve private orbital launch capability. The mission, named Aagaman (which means Arrival in Sanskrit), lifted off from the First Launch Pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at around 12:05 pm IST after a roughly half-hour technical hold. About 15-16 minutes later the rocket injected its payloads into a low Earth orbit of approximately 450 kilometres at a 60-degree inclination, with all four stages performing nominally and stage separations clean. Reaching orbit on a first attempt remains a rare achievement for any new orbital rocket. Vikram-1 is a four-stage small-lift vehicle standing roughly 20-24 metres tall, featuring three solid-propellant stages powered by the Kalam series motors and a liquid upper stage that uses a 3D-printed Raman engine. The vehicle makes extensive use of carbon-composite structures and was designed and built entirely in India with a payload capacity of up to about 350 kilograms to low Earth orbit. It carried Skyroot’s own SCOPE satellite, Grahaa Space’s SOLARAS S3, Cosmoserve Space’s Embrace robotic-arm debris-capture demonstrator, technology payloads from German company DCubed, and symbolic items including a lab-grown diamond lotus called Cosmic Bloom and a miniature gold rocket honouring Vikram Sarabhai, C.V. Raman and A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, along with commemorative messages including a handwritten Vande Mataram postcard from India's Prime Minister. The company was founded on the 12th of June, 2018, in Hyderabad by two former ISRO scientists, Pawan Kumar Chandana who serves as co-founder, CEO and CTO, and Naga Bharath Daka who serves as co-founder and COO. Both left stable government roles to pursue the private space opportunity at a time when India’s sector was still largely closed, later benefiting from the 2020 reforms that created IN-SPACe and opened access to ISRO facilities. Early backing came from investors such as Mukesh Bansal, and the company grew into India’s first space-tech unicorn while building substantial manufacturing capabilities. The flight follows the successful suborbital Vikram-S launch in November 2022 and positions Skyroot to pursue higher launch cadence, an upgraded Vikram-1U with boosters, and the larger Vikram-2 planned for higher payloads around 2027.