Skyroot's Vikram-1 reached orbit on its first flight from Sriharikota on 18 July 2026, the first orbital launch by a private Indian company

Vikram-1, a rocket designed and built by the Hyderabad company Skyroot Aerospace, lifted off from the First Launch Pad at Sriharikota at 12:05:30 pm IST on Saturday, 18 July 2026, and reached orbit on its first attempt. ISRO describes it as the first orbital launch from Indian soil by a private company. The mission was called Aagaman, which means “arrival”.

The target was a low Earth orbit of about 450 km with a 60 degree inclination. Skyroot confirmed afterwards that the rocket had reached it and released its payloads, and ISRO’s own account says the satellites SCOPE and Grahaa were injected into that orbit.

The flight, from the pad to orbit

The launch was planned for 11:30 am and went at 12:05 pm, about 35 minutes late, according to ThePrint and the Deccan Chronicle; the Deccan Chronicle puts the hold down to a navigation-related issue. IEEE Spectrum reports that the rocket reached orbit about 15 minutes after liftoff.

Skyroot’s own post said Vikram-1 had cleared the launch tower at ten seconds after liftoff, according to the news agency IANS. A joint statement from ISRO and IN-SPACe, the government body that authorises and promotes private space activity, said they “congratulates the team at Skyroot Aerospace for the successful maiden launch of Vikram-I launcher”.

Pawan Kumar Chandana, Skyroot’s co-founder and chief executive, told Via Satellite the launch showed that India has the talent, technology and industrial strength to build launch vehicles to global standards. The South First reports that he also called Skyroot the first private company to take a rocket to orbit on its first flight. It notes that SpaceX’s Falcon 1 reached orbit in 2008 only on its fourth attempt, after three failures.

What kind of rocket Vikram-1 is

ISRO’s account describes Vikram-1 as a four-stage vehicle: three solid-fuel stages and one liquid-fuel stage on top. The liquid stage is driven by an engine called Raman-I, which was tested at ISRO’s Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre. IEEE Spectrum adds that the engine is 3D-printed and can be started, stopped and restarted in space.

The airframe is made mainly of carbon composite, a light and strong material of carbon fibre set in resin. Skyroot’s website and the Press Information Bureau (PIB) both give the payload capacity as 350 kg to low Earth orbit; Skyroot’s site adds up to 260 kg to a sun-synchronous orbit, the near-polar path that keeps the sun at the same angle on each pass.

Reports differ on height. Most press accounts say “seven storeys”, IEEE Spectrum gives 22 metres and the Deccan Chronicle gives 24 metres. This article uses “seven storeys” because it is the figure most reports share.

The cargo: satellites, a robotic arm and a gold rocket

PIB’s release of 18 July, written before liftoff, lists the customer payloads planned for the flight, and the Deccan Chronicle describes them after it:

• SCOPE, Skyroot’s own satellite, which measures flight data.
• Solaras S3, a nanosatellite from the Indian company Grahaa Space.
• Embrace, a robotic arm from the Indian company Cosmoserve Space, designed to capture orbital debris.
• A payload from the German company DCubed that checks how small objects are deployed and released in orbit.

The flight also carried two symbolic items, according to PIB. One was Cosmic Bloom, a floral artwork from the Indian firm Cosmos Diamonds. The other was an 18-karat gold micro-rocket carrying sculptures of C. V. Raman, Vikram Sarabhai and A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, each smaller than a grain of rice. The Deccan Chronicle reports that the team also flew a handwritten postcard from the Prime Minister bearing the words “Vande Mataram”.

ISRO’s page says that, apart from the two satellites it names, the other payloads on the upper stage were for in-orbit experiments. Sources count the payloads differently, from “multiple” to six, so this article does not give a total.

What ISRO and IN-SPACe supplied

Vikram-1 is a private design, but it flew on public infrastructure. ISRO’s page says the first-stage motor was cast and tested at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre’s solid-motor facilities, and the second-stage motor was validated at its static test facility. ISRO also supported stage preparation, transport to the pad, trajectory analysis and vehicle integration, and a safety team monitored Skyroot’s work at Sriharikota around the clock. It is the same spaceport that launched ISRO’s own rockets for decades.

IN-SPACe gave access to those facilities, technical consultancy, mission-readiness reviews and the launch clearance. The route by which a private company gets that clearance is set out in our explainer on India’s 2023 space policy. Skyroot’s earlier suborbital rocket, Vikram-S, flew from the same spaceport on 18 November 2022, as ISRO’s page records.

The company and the team

Entrepreneur India says Skyroot was founded in 2018 by Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka, both former space scientists. Business Today, writing before the launch, credits about 1,000 people and more than 400 suppliers with the work, over nearly 3,000 days. The rocket is named for Vikram Sarabhai, who founded India’s space programme, according to IANS.

In May 2026 Skyroot raised 60 million US dollars at a valuation of 1.1 billion dollars, which made it India’s first space unicorn, a startup valued above a billion dollars. Via Satellite and IEEE Spectrum both report the round. Entrepreneur India lists Sherpalo Ventures and Singapore’s GIC as co-leads.

Reactions and the numbers around it

Prime Minister Narendra Modi telephoned the team after the flight and posted that it was “a defining moment in India’s space journey”, according to All India Radio News. ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan said the success reflected the growing maturity of India’s private space sector, as quoted by The South First. IN-SPACe Chairman Pawan Goenka said the effort involved a team of more than a thousand people and close to 400 suppliers.

On 23 August 2026, at the third National Space Day in Ahmedabad, ISRO felicitated the Skyroot team. ISRO’s page for the event ties the 2020 space reforms to “growth of more than 440 space start-ups in the country”. The Deccan Chronicle’s launch-day report gives about 400, so the count varies with the source and date. National Space Day marks the Chandrayaan-3 landing of 23 August 2023, and our piece on India’s NewSpace startups covers the sector Skyroot belongs to.

What comes next, as of 29 October 2026

Skyroot said on National Space Day that Stage 1 of its second Vikram-1 was on its way to Sriharikota, according to Business Today of 24 August. The company has given no launch date in any source reviewed for this article, and a Business Today report notes that the announcement carried no mission details. Via Satellite quotes Chandana saying Skyroot wants consecutive launches in a short time to establish the vehicle’s reliability.

IEEE Spectrum reports that commercial operations could begin early in 2027 and that the Hyderabad factory can build one rocket a month. It also quotes Torsten Kriening, chief executive of SpaceWatch.Global, on the industry’s record: “The graveyard of small launchers is full of companies that flew once and stumbled on flights two, three, and four.”

The larger Vikram-2 is planned for a first flight in 2027. Via Satellite and Entrepreneur India give its capacity as 1,000 kg to low Earth orbit, while IEEE Spectrum and ThePrint give 900 kg and a cryogenic engine. ThePrint adds that its test flight will not happen before the end of 2027.