- Skyroot Aerospace's CEO says Vikram-1 launch marks start of India's private space journey
- India becomes third country with private firm launching satellite into orbit on first attempt
- Skyroot raised $100 million over seven years, unlike SpaceX's early funding advantage
Skyroot Aerospace Co-founder and CEO Pawan Kumar Chandana has said the successful launch of Vikram-1 is just the beginning of India's private space journey. After the historic mission, the company plans to increase the number of launches and hopes to eventually scale up to one rocket launch every month.
In an exclusive interview with NDTV, Chandana spoke about Vikram-1's success, which made India only the third country in the world where a private company has successfully launched a satellite into orbit. He said the achievement still feels unreal and has not completely sunk in yet. What makes the mission even more special is that Vikram-1 succeeded on its very first attempt.
Chandana said SpaceX reached orbit only on its fourth launch attempt, while Skyroot succeeded on its very first attempt. However, he pointed out that the two companies started under very different conditions.
He mentioned that SpaceX had around $100 million in funding from the beginning and already had a strong space ecosystem in the US.
Skyroot, he said, took more than seven years to raise the same amount of money. The company also had to build its team from scratch because India's private space industry was still new.
Chandana said the achievement was the result of years of hard work by Skyroot's young team, whose average age is just 28.
"I think this just shows that the team has been on it and has done a wonderful job in designing the rocket so well, predicting all the scenarios which can come, all the ways it can fail. So I think it's all a phenomenal team which has designed this and made it happen," he said.
He added that nearly 95% of the company's engineers had never worked on a space mission before and built the rocket by learning from scratch.
Recalling the tense moments before liftoff, Chandana revealed that the launch was briefly put on hold just five minutes before take-off because of a minor issue. After the problem was resolved, the rocket lifted off about 30 minutes later.
He said every stage of the 16-minute flight, from clearing the launch tower to satellite deployment, matched predictions almost perfectly, calling it a "textbook launch." "And then everything, my heart was racing, you know, for every moment, the lift off, clearing the launch tower, which is very important on the first launch," he added.
On the company's future plans, Chandana said Skyroot is targeting the second launch of Vikram-1 later this year after reviewing data from the first mission and making any necessary improvements. He said the company has already built a factory capable of producing one rocket every month and hopes to eventually achieve that launch frequency.
He said India currently has about 2% of the global space economy and aims to increase that to around 10% over the next few years.
