India Creates Space History! Vikram-1 Makes Private Rocket Breakthrough | Pawan Goenka Exclusive

Video from the channel ET Now about Vikram-I, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 24:37. Language: English. Video type: News.

ET Now interviews Pawan Goenka, chairman of IN-SPACe, days after Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 lifted off from Sriharikota and reached orbit, the first India-built private rocket to do so. Goenka calls the flight flawless: after an initial hold, it met every mission objective and more on its first attempt, something he says the private sector had never achieved before. With this, India becomes the third country, after the United States and China, with private orbital launch capability.

Goenka credits the Skyroot team but highlights the role of ISRO and IN-SPACe: authorisations, licences, calculating the insurance, launching from ISRO facilities with its experts involved and, above all, the rigour of the reviews, around 25 over two years covering mission and launch readiness, at the same level as those for an ISRO rocket. In the control room, apart from the front row, which belonged to Skyroot, staff came from the agency. On the PSLV's two consecutive failures, he says ISRO has closed its investigation and will resume launching soon; in his view, the private sector will eventually free the agency from routine demand so it can focus on scientific missions and technologies such as the reusable launcher or heavy-lift vehicles. He also mentions the new launch site at Kulasekarapattinam and India's 2023 space policy, followed by authorisation rules and procedures.

The official target is a $44 billion space economy by 2033, which Goenka considers very ambitious; today India accounts for less than 2% of a roughly $440 billion global space economy. The key, he says, is demand: government departments, the armed forces and projects such as the low-Earth-orbit constellation announced by a major Indian conglomerate. The two targets he says are worth watching are five space unicorns and 50 launches a year by 2030, both set by the Prime Minister. For launches he counts on three launch vehicles, including Skyroot's and Agnikul's, at one flight a month each, plus around 15 PSLV and LVM3 flights. Of India's more than 400 space start-ups, only 10 or 15 work on launch vehicles; the closest to Skyroot is Agnikul, from the IIT Madras research park, which made a suborbital flight in mid-2024, is about a year behind and is developing a reusable rocket from the outset. At least five Indian private companies already have satellites in orbit.