What's next for Skyroot, the firm that conducted India's first private space mission?

Skyroot Aerospace, which successfully launched India’s first private rocket on Friday, is preparing to launch at least two rockets a month by the end of 2025 while also developing reusable rocket engines.

“Our next launch will take place within the next year, and it will carry client payloads and deploy them to orbit. We want to achieve a consistency of making two launches every month, at least, by the end of 2025, “Pawan Kumar Chandana, chief executive of Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace, said in an interview. Skyroot’s first launch last week was that of a suborbital rocket, in which the spacecraft reaches outer space but is not fast enough to escape Earth’s gravity.

Satellite launches are typically done by orbital rockets that achieve the required velocity to escape Earth’s gravitation to reach at least the low-earth orbits (LEOs) at altitudes of around 200km.

According to Chandana, the launch of the Vikram-S suborbital rocket on 18 November “will give global investors and clients confidence in India’s space sector, since only a handful of companies globally have managed to cross 80km into space, let alone in the first attempt”. Skyroot is also working to develop reusable booster stages for its ‘Vikram’ series of rockets, he added.

The booster stage of a rocket is the engine that helps it achieve ‘escape velocity’, following which the booster detaches from the main rocket, re-enters Earth, and uses small motors to land. The engine, or the booster, thus can be reused for future missions, saving costs for a rocket launch services firm. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the only firm to have managed this feat.

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