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Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1, India's first privately developed orbital-class rocket, completed a successful maiden flight on 18 July 2026.
The mission, named Aagaman, lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota and deployed its payloads on schedule.
The success made India the third country with a private orbital launch capability, after the United States and China.
Vikram-1 is a four-stage vehicle with an all-carbon-composite structure, carrying up to 350 kg to Low Earth Orbit and 260 kg to sun-synchronous orbit.
Its first three stages are solid-fuelled, topped by a hypergolic liquid fourth stage using a cluster of four Raman engines.
Solid rocket motors are simple, storable and deliver enormous thrust, which makes them ideal for getting a vehicle off the pad and through the dense lower atmosphere. Their drawback is that once lit they cannot be throttled or shut down — a solid stage burns until its propellant is exhausted. That is unacceptable for the final stage, where a satellite must be released into a precise orbit, because the vehicle needs to fire, coast, and fire again in controlled increments. Hypergolic propellants solve this: monomethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide ignite spontaneously on contact, with no ignition system at all, so the engine can be restarted reliably simply by opening valves. That combination — solid stages for brute lift, a restartable hypergolic stage for precision — is the standard architecture for small satellite launchers.
Simple Analogy: The solid stages are a catapult: enormous force, no steering once released. The hypergolic upper stage is a pair of oars, letting you nudge the boat to exactly the right spot.
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Vikram-1 flies Mission Aagaman and places payloads in orbit, India's first private orbital launch.
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India's first privately developed orbital-class launch vehicle, built by Skyroot Aerospace.
The name of Vikram-1's maiden flight, meaning 'the arrival'.
A fuel and oxidiser pair that ignites spontaneously on contact, allowing restartable engines without an ignition system.
A near-polar orbit in which a satellite passes over a given point at the same local solar time, used for earth observation.
Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre, the single-window agency for private space activity.