Vikram 1 is in orbit.
This one line fails to convey the impact that this launch has on not only India’s space program, but the industry at large. While I was reading through many viewpoints, I came across one that seemed to explain this in vivid detail. Here it is, reproduced in full.
What Skyroot pulled off this morning is genuinely stunning. Most people think a rocket’s job is to go up. It is not. Going up is the easy part. The hard part is going sideways fast enough that you never come down. Let me explain this one idea in simple words.
So orbit is not a height. It is a speed.
Throw a ball. It falls. Throw it harder, it lands further away. Now imagine throwing it so hard that as it falls, the Earth curves away underneath it at exactly the same rate. It keeps falling forever and never hits the ground. That is orbit. So a satellite is not floating up there. It is falling around the planet, endlessly, because it is moving sideways at about 28,000 kmph.
That is roughly 25 times the speed of a passenger jet.
So a rocket does two jobs. It climbs out of the thick air near the ground, then it tips over and spends most of its fuel building sideways speed. Almost all of the energy goes into that second part.
Now let’s understand what Vikram-1 has achieved. It lifted off from Sriharikota at 12:05 pm today. The launch got held for 35 minutes at the T minus 5 minute mark because of a navigation issue. They fixed it and went. Fifteen to sixteen minutes later, the payloads were in a 450 km orbit. Fifteen minutes from a launch pad in Andhra to a stable orbit around Earth. 🙂
The rocket is 24 metres tall, about a seven storey building. It is built from carbon composite instead of steel, which makes it far lighter, since weight is everything in this game. Every kilo of structure you save is a kilo of satellite you can carry. Now, Vikram-1 has four sections stacked on top of each other. Three solid fuel stages named after Dr Kalam. Kalam-1200 at the bottom, then Kalam-250, then Kalam-100. On top sits a small liquid engine called the Orbital Adjustment Module.
As in most rockets, once the bottom stage has burned all its fuel, that huge empty tube is just a heavy metal shell you are dragging along. So the rocket throws it away mid flight. Lighter rocket, same engine push, faster acceleration. Then the next stage lights up. Think of a runner carrying three water bottles. He drinks the first one and throws it away instead of carrying an empty bottle for the rest of the race. Today all three stages fired and separated cleanly. First stage pushed it through the thick lower atmosphere. Second stage took over higher up. Third stage, the smallest, pushed it further.
Then came the clever bit. The top module runs on liquid fuel, and its engine is 3D printed. Liquid engines can be switched off and started again. Solid fuel cannot. Once you light a solid motor, it burns till it is done, like a firecracker. You cannot stop it or restart it. So the liquid module is the precision tool. It fired for about six minutes, adjusted the path, and placed the satellites exactly where they needed to go. That start, stop, restart ability is what turns a rocket from a big firework into a delivery vehicle.
But why this is a massive deal? Rockets have been doing this for years. See, in 2022, Skyroot flew Vikram-S. That was suborbital. It went up and came back down. Impressive, but going up is a fraction of the energy. Reaching orbit needs roughly 30 times more energy than just touching space. Today they crossed that line.
India is now the third country in the world where a private company has put something into orbit. Only America and China had that before.
Skyroot is a Hyderabad startup. Founded by Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka, both ex ISRO engineers who quit to build this. They raised $60 million in May. They have been test firing motors in Nagpur since 2020, one stage at a time, for six years.
So, six years of quiet, unglamorous testing for fifteen minutes of flight. And they did it because ISRO opened up Sriharikota to a private company. IN-SPACe cleared the way. A government space agency handing its national launch pad to a startup is not a small cultural shift.
Ten years ago that was unthinkable. The payload list is lovely too. Two cubesats, one from Skyroot and one from another Indian startup, Grahaa Space. A lab grown diamond from a Bengaluru company. A handwritten postcard from Modi Ji reading Vande Mataram, along with handwritten notes from the team and their families. Somebody’s handwriting is circling the Earth right now at 28,000 kmph. 🙂
Now, yes this was a test flight. They have said more test flights come before commercial launches, with up to two more Vikram-1 flights planned this year. First success is the hardest, but the real business is doing this again and again, cheaply and reliably. Still. A private Indian company built a rocket from scratch and reached orbit on the first try. Learn the name. Skyroot. 🙂