India's first privately built rocket roared into orbit

Skyroot Aerospace launched its four-stage Vikram-1 rocket into low-Earth orbit on July 18th, making the Hyderabad company the operator of India's first privately built rocket to reach orbit. Vikram-1 lifted off at 12:05 p.m. local time from a launch pad on the barrier island of Sriharikota, and by 17 minutes of flight it had hit every performance metric. Mission control called it a "grand success," and the control room roared. The rocket can carry more than 770 pounds of payload, and it did not fly empty. Aboard were customer satellites from the German firm DCUBED and two Indian companies. One of them, Cosmoserve, paid for a robotic drone called Embrace, whose job is to grab space debris and hurl it out of Earth's orbit. "The demand for services enabled by satellites in space will only continue to grow," said co-founder Pawan Kumar Chandana. India now has a national route to space, alongside China and the US.