spaceflight startup skyroot It aspires to make history by launching India’s first privately developed rocket, and aims to put it into action early next week.
The company said on Tuesday that the first launch of the Vikram-S suborbital rocket is likely to take place by November 12, with the launch window running till November 16. The launch will take place from the Indian Space Research Organization’s Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota. The rest of the date depends on the climatic conditions.
The Vikram-S is a suborbital, single-stage launch car. For this demonstration mission, named Prambh, or “beginning” in Sanskrit, the rocket will be carrying three buyer payloads. Details on the payload were not offered. Hyderabad-based Skyroute is making a sequence of Vikram launch automobiles, so named after Vikram Sarabhai, the founder of India’s regional program. Naga Bharat Daka, COO and co-founder of Skyroute, mentioned in a press release that the Vikram-S suborbital rocket will be used to investigate and verify the applied sciences to be used within the sequence.
The launch may mark the beginning of a new era of private space flight in India, a country with a national sector program but a relatively small private sector sector. The nation has already launched strikes to change this; In June 2020, the government carried out major sectoral reforms including the setting up of the Indian National Center for Space Promotion and Authorization (IN-SPACe) to facilitate private companies using ISRO’s infrastructure. The government also sets up NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), the business arm of ISRO. (Recently, NSIL facilitated the launch of 36 OneWeb satellites on an Indian rocket.)
Last month, SkyRoot raised $51 million in Series B financing led by Singapore-based funding agency GIC. This brings the startup’s full funding up to this point to $68 million, making it possibly the most well-funded Indian sector startup in operation.
