Vikram-1: India’s First Private Orbital Rocket | Skyroot Aerospace | UPSC Current Affairs 2026

Video from the channel Vajirao and Reddy Institute about Vikram-I, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 15:52. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Current-affairs explainer class, aimed at civil-service exam candidates, about Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 and its maiden mission Aagaman, which placed payloads into low orbit. The presenter describes it as India's first privately developed orbital launch vehicle, making the country the third, after the United States and China, where a private company reaches orbit on its own.

Until now, only the state-run ISRO placed payloads into orbit. Skyroot, headquartered in Hyderabad and the sector's first unicorn, had flown the suborbital Vikram-S in 2022. The rocket is named after Vikram Sarabhai, considered the father of India's space programme. The sector opened to private companies in 2020, and the 2023 Indian Space Policy extended that opening across the entire value chain, with IN-SPACe as authoriser and regulator and NSIL as ISRO's commercial arm.

The launch vehicle uses structures made entirely of carbon composite material, lower stages with solid Kalam engines and a 3D-printed liquid-fuel Raman engine. The flight carried symbolic payloads: the artwork Cosmic Bloom and an 18-carat gold micro-rocket with sculptures of C. V. Raman, Vikram Sarabhai and A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. The class covers public funding, the liberalisation of foreign investment (74% automatic in satellites, 49% in launch vehicles and spaceports, 100% in components) and the remaining challenges: dependence on Sriharikota, the lack of reusable launch vehicles and of a space activities law, and the new spaceport at Kulasekarapattinam.