At 12:05:30 PM on July 18, 2026, a rocket built by a start-up left Indian soil and reached orbit. Vikram-I, a small satellite launcher from Skyroot Aerospace, lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, and with it a private Indian company flew an orbital mission from home ground for the first time, succeeding on the first attempt.
The Indian Space Research Organisation, which hosted and backed the flight, called it “a significant milestone in the Indian Space
Programme”. Vikram-I carried multiple payloads. Two satellites, SCOPE and Grahaa, went into low Earth orbit, and the remaining payloads stayed on the upper stage for in-orbit experiments.
Skyroot had flirted with the milestone before: its Vikram-S test rocket made a suborbital hop from Sriharikota on November 18, 2022. Vikram-I is the orbital machine, with 4 stages, 3 of them solid and one liquid, sized to launch small satellites to LEO.
ISRO’s handholding
The state agency did far more than watch. ISRO opened the facilities at Sriharikota where solid motors are cast and statically tested: the first stage motor was cast and proof-tested there, and the second stage motor was validated on the same static stand. The upper stage liquid engine, RAMAN-I, ran its tests at the LPSC facility. ISRO teams also supported stage preparation, material handling, the haul of stages to the pad, trajectory analysis and final integration on the First Launch Pad, and the agency’s safety team watched over Skyroot’s crew on a 24×7 basis. Photos released with the note show Vikram-1 on the pad and the static test of its KALAM 1200 solid motor at SDSC SHAR.
IN-SPACe, the country’s regulation and promotion agency for space activity, built the seamless mechanism that let a non-governmental entity reach ISRO’s facilities in the first place, and it provided consultancy on technical matters, mission readiness reviews and the launch clearances.
The reform that made it possible
The path opened in 2020, when the Government of India announced space-sector reforms allowing private industry into space activities, and the new Indian Space Policy has since sped the growth of start-ups building launch vehicles, satellites and space applications.
ISRO notes the flight made Skyroot “the first private company to successfully launch to
orbit from Indian soil”, first attempt included, and says it “opens up the gates to global
commercial opportunities” for ventures of the same kind. Four months on, the launch stands as the moment India’s space sector stopped being a single government shop.
Sources
- First private orbital launch lifts off from Sriharikota
- Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1: India’s First Private Orbital Launch… | CLAT Gurukul
