India’s first private rocket Vikram-1 succeeds in maiden orbital launch

Soon after the launch, the founders of the country’s first space unicorn spoke with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a phone call. Talking about the government’s decision to open up the space sector to private players, Prime Minister Modi said, “There were a lot of concerns raised; many said that this cannot happen, how will it be done. But I moved ahead, and now because of you my decision has been proven to be right. Now my team will also accept that we should trust the youth of the country, we should give them work, and they will do it. And, you have done it.”

The founders Pawan Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka informed the PM that a postcard signed by him with the message ‘Vande Mataram’ has reached space.

At the time of the launch, while there was anxiety in the mission control, after the normal functioning of the first two stages of the four-stage launch vehicle, excitement and celebration took over. While the company had already achieved a successful lift-off with a sub-orbital vehicle in 2022, the team started celebrating when the vehicle crossed 100km altitude, marking its entry into space.

After the three solid-fuel stages, the last liquid fuel-based orbital adjustment module injected the satellites one after the other in the nearly 450-km orbit. The onboard camera also captured an image of a sunrise behind it.

While Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) chairman V Narayanan, In-SPACe chairman Pawan Goenka, former chairpersons S Somanath, AS Kiran Kumar, K Radhakrishnan, as well as astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla were present at the mission control in Bengaluru, the launch was witnessed by Union Minister of State for Space Dr Jitendra Singh from New Delhi. After the launch, he said: “They have always been extremely innovative and creative. It is not an empty payload like many first missions carry. Here we have an experimental payload…. If the PM had not opened the space sector, we would not have witnessed this. This marks India’sentry into the highly competitive global space sector. For India, the sky is no longer the limit,” Dr Singh said.

He recounted that even during his time at Isro, Chandana was always an innovator. Singh said: “Even when we were doing the Sun mission Aditya-L1, it was his idea to put in an on-board camera so we could see what was happening with the mission while in space.”

Singh also added that unlike first missions for many space start-ups, Vikram-1 did not carry a dummy payload. It carried actual technology demonstrator experiments, showing the faith people had in the company.

Lt. Gen. AK Bhatt (retd.), Director General, Indian Space Association (ISpA), said: “The successful deployment of such complex, IP-heavy payloads proves that our private ecosystem is now building critical global infrastructure for space sustainability and high-resolution Earth intelligence.”