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TOKYO — Indian launch startup Skyroot Aerospace is preparing for its first orbital launch attempt as soon as July 12, with plans to quickly scale up to monthly launches.
Skyroot announced July 2 its Vikram-1 rocket was on the pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, India’s main launch site. The launch of the rocket is scheduled for a window that opens July 12 and runs through Aug. 4.
The mission, called Aagaman by the company, is primarily a test flight of the rocket, the first privately developed orbital launch vehicle in India. It is carrying several cubesats and hosted payloads from domestic and international customers. The launch is targeting an orbit at an altitude of 450 kilometers and an inclination of 60 degrees.
“The single most important objective of Mission Aagaman is to capture the real in-flight performance data from every system on Vikram-1,” said Pawan Kumar Chandana, co-founder and chief executive of Skyroot, in a statement. “It will help us validate our designs and inform subsequent vehicle development as we build a reliable, high-cadence commercial launch program.”
Vikram-1 is a four-stage rocket using solid motors for the lower three stages and a liquid-propellant kick stage. The rocket is designed to place up to 350 kilograms into low Earth orbit. Some of the vehicle’s technologies were tested using a suborbital rocket, Vikram-S, launched in 2022.
“With Vikram-S in 2022, we validated the foundation of our technology stack,” said Naga Bharath Daka, co-founder and chief operating officer of Skyroot, in a statement. “With Vikram-1, we take our biggest step yet toward a reliable, high-cadence launch program built in India, for India and the world.”
The upcoming launch comes on the heels of raising $60 million in May in a round that valued the company at $1.1 billion. Skyroot said the funding would allow it to scale up production of Vikram-1 and work on the larger Vikram-2 rocket.
During a panel discussion at the Spacetide conference here July 7, Ashwin Mahavadi, senior vice president for business and strategy at Skyroot, said the company is planning up to two more Vikram-1 launches this year. The company is also preparing to introduce an upgraded version, Vikram-1U, with strap-on boosters, in the first quarter of 2027. Vikram-1U will have a payload capacity of up to 550 kilograms to low Earth orbit.
The company wants to quickly scale up launches once Vikram-1 enters service. “Between Vikram-1 and Vikram-1U, we have the production capacity in-house to manufacture almost one rocket per month,” he said. “That’s the cadence the company is looking to achieve in the coming months once the reliability is established.”
Skyroot, founded in 2018, has benefited from the Indian government’s space policy reforms in recent years intended to promote the growth of the country’s commercial space sector. That has included access to test stands and launch infrastructure from the Indian space agency ISRO.
“If we had to invest in the test stands and the launch pads, then our capital requirements would have been much larger,” he said. “Skyroot has been able to attract capital and get access to ISRO facilities to really compress the timelines of product development.”
A more recent development that will benefit Skyroot, Mahavadi said, is new government incentives to encourage companies to launch satellites on Indian vehicles. He said that program will subsidize launch costs by 30%, up to $3,000 per kilogram. “That’s a huge boost for the up-and-coming satellite companies in India,” he said. “Skyroot is one of the primary beneficiaries.”
He added the company is open to expanding its launch operations beyond India. That includes potentially setting up a subsidiary in Japan to serve Japanese customers, which may ultimately involve conducting launches from Japan.
The company’s primary focus for now, though, is getting Vikram-1 into service. “The launch vehicle has to be reliable,” he said. “Everything else only comes after reliability.”