Overview
- Skyroot’s Vikram-1 completed its maiden flight, called Mission Aagaman, and placed demonstration and symbolic payloads into a roughly 450 km low Earth orbit at about 60° inclination on Saturday.
- Launch was delayed when an automatic prelaunch sequence halted briefly five minutes before liftoff, engineers reset the system, and the rocket lifted off at 12:05 pm and completed all stage separations.
- The vehicle deployed technology demonstrations including Skyroot’s SCOPE, Grahaa Space’s SOLARAS, Cosmoserve’s Embrace and two DCubed payloads plus symbolic items such as a handwritten ‘Vande Mataram’ postcard from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and an artwork called Cosmic Bloom.
- ISRO and IN-SPACe provided technical facilities and coordination for the flight, and leaders from IN-SPACe, ISRO and the government publicly endorsed the mission as meeting and exceeding its objectives.
- Skyroot, which became a space‑tech unicorn in May 2026, says it will use the flight data to certify Vikram-1 for commercial service around 2027 while developing larger Vikram-II and reusable vehicles to compete in the small-satellite launch market.