Skyroot Aerospace Successfully Launches India's First Private Orbital Rocket

Watching Vikram-1 lift off from Sriharikota this morning genuinely gave me goosebumps. Skyroot just made India the third country in the world with private orbital launch capability — after the US and China. Let that sink in for a second.

Founded in 2018 by ex-ISRO engineers, Skyroot has gone from a suborbital test flight in 2022 to a fully orbital, four-stage rocket in under four years. Vikram-1 today carried real customer payloads on this debut flight too — not just a token test mass — and every single one of them made it to orbit. Huge congratulations to the entire Skyroot team, especially to founders Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka who set out & dared to get the ball rolling.

I’ve always been excited watching ISRO launches and I’m glad there’s another player on the calendar now.

July 18, 2026 · + Permalink

India safely launches a $1.5 billion satellite for NASA: Ars Technica

Eric Berger, writing for Ars Technica:

The $1.5 billion synthetic aperture radar imaging satellite, a joint project between NASA and the Indian space agency ISRO, successfully launched into orbit on Wednesday aboard that nation’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, a medium-lift rocket.

The mission, named NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar), was subsequently deployed into its intended orbit 464 miles (747 km) above the Earth’s surface. From this Sun-synchronous orbit, it will collect data about the planet’s land and ice surfaces two times every 12 days, including the infrequently visited polar regions in the Southern Hemisphere.

NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) is a collaborative mission between NASA, the U.S. space agency, and ISRO, India’s space agency. While the launch was successfully carried out by ISRO using its reliable launch vehicle, the satellite itself—equipped with both L-band and S-band Synthetic Aperture Radar systems—was developed jointly by NASA and ISRO. It’s unclear why Eric at Ars Technica chose to describe it as a launch “for NASA,” given the mission’s deeply collaborative nature.

August 3, 2025 · + Permalink

ISRO set to launch 31 Satellites on January 12

This first mission of 2018 will be launched from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh and the payaload includes a Cartosat-2 Series satellite, one micro and one nano satellite each from India, along with 28 foreign satellites from the US and other countries.

January 8, 2018 · + Permalink