At five minutes past noon last weekend, a seven-storey rocket built by a Hyderabad startup lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota.
Fifteen minutes later, Skyroot Aerospace confirmed that Vikram-1's upper stage had reached its planned 450-kilometre low Earth orbit and began deploying its payloads, including the company's own SCOPE satellite and a spacecraft from fellow startup Grahaa Space.
The mission was named Aagaman, Sanskrit for ‘arrival,’ and rarely has a mission name earned its keep so completely.
With one flight, India became just the third country in the world, after the United States and China, whose private sector can independently reach orbit.
Skyroot did it on its very first attempt, a feat that has eluded most of the world's launch startups.
