Space startups revolutionize India’s rocket science
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Loading... - Maira Chawla
- 03 Feb 2023
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First Indian rocket built by a private company reached outer space in November 2022
When the Vikram-S rocket was launched in November, it set a new milestone in India’s space industry — a success for the private players who recently entered a domain that for decades belonged only to the state.
The privately built rocket took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota and reached an apogee of 89.5 km, making its owners, Skyroot Aerospace, the first private Indian company to reach outer space.
“Beyond the symbolic value of being the first, we are happy to be among the early movers in the private space start-up ecosystem which has started to demonstrate its potential,” Pawan Kumar Chandana, co-founder of the Hyderabad-based startup, told Arab News.
India opened the door to private companies in the space industry in 2020, with a regulatory overhaul and the formation of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center — a single-window autonomous agency under the government’s Department of Space. Before that, the state-owned Indian Space Research Organization was the sole arbiter of the country’s space programs.
“Our successful launch has confirmed the domain expertise and leadership capabilities of the Indian space sector,” Chandana said. “We now focus on developing our flagship Vikram I orbital vehicle that we (will) launch in 2023.”
Skyroot Aerospace was founded by Chandana and his partner Bharath Daka in 2018. Both of them spent years working at ISRO. Chandana specializes in the mechanical aspects of rockets, and Daka in avionics — aerospace electronics.
Skyroot is one of several private companies to have arrived on the scene since the industry opened up. When the Indian Space Association launched in December 2020, it had just five members, but, the association’s director general Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Anil Kumar Bhatt told Arab News, that number has already increased tenfold. Read More…
