Starship troopers: Startups can further augment India's space ambitions

The success of Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 rocket is a milestone in India’s space programme. It was the first privately designed and built Indian rocket to reach orbit and deploy satellites. The launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), was delayed by 35 minutes due to a technical issue. But Vikram-1 behaved perfectly after liftoff. It followed the scheduled flight path, with its four-stage engine firing in programmed sequences to push it into the planned 450-km low-earth orbit (LEO) about 15 minutes after liftoff. This makes India the fourth nation — after the United States, China and New Zealand — to develop private-sector rocket capability.  Mission Aagaman, as the test flight was called, placed all the payloads it carried into orbit. It carried two cubesats. One was Skyroot’s Scope satellite, which will gather data for future missions. The other is the Solaras S3 nanosatellite pathfinder, designed by another Indian startup, Grahaa Space.

 

Skyroot is looking to fill a gap in the market with the Vikram series. Vikram-1 is designed to place up to 350 kilograms into the LEO. An upgraded version called Vikram-1U, which will have strap-on boosters, will increase that payload to 550 kilograms. These are ideal payloads for small satellite launches that are short of efficient launch vehicles. Using rockets designed to lift heavy loads is inefficient for small satellite deployment. Either the rocket is underutilised if there’s insufficient load, or there is a delay in launching satellites, since the payloads must wait until enough are available to generate a full load. Vikram-1 could fill that gap. Skyroot raised $60 million in May, which it invested in the design and production of the Vikram series. The four-stage, seven-storey-tall Vikram-1 rocket has three solid-fuel stages which drop off, and a fourth liquid-fuel stage that carries out the tricky task of manoeuvring exactly into the desired orbit.

 

It is unusual for the first launch of a new rocket to be entirely successful. Skyroot will study the data and carry out at least two more test flights before going fully commercial. It is one of the hundreds of Indian startups that have moved into the aerospace sector since policy changed to accommodate private enterprise. It was incorporated in Hyderabad in 2018 and both the cofounders, Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka, had earlier worked for Isro. The Isro pedigree of Skyroot’s founders is not unusual. India’s aerospace agency has seen the exit of over 100 engineers and scientists. Most have moved to startups. This exodus has been so marked that it has led to the agency changing its exit policy to try and retain employees on mission-critical projects. There is an ongoing debate that the private sector is now building its capabilities at the expense of the agency. Although Skyroot’s launch took place at an Isro facility and the company was congratulated by the Prime Minister, the tensions between the space agency and the private sector are now visible and growing.

 

By analogy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), the United States agency, tenders out for its equipment to the private sector, while setting specifications and doing some of its own design. SpaceX and other private firms such as Blue Origin build rockets to Nasa specifications. Nasa owns thousands of patents, which it licenses out. Indian policymakers will have to find similar ways to resolve the tensions to ensure that Isro doesn’t suffer even as the country develops the private aerospace ecosystem.