Skyroot’s moment is real. So is the distance still left to cover
Chethan Kumar
As a young democracy grows out of adolescence, its rolling out reels and reels of tales. If the first post office or a telephone connection paints one colour, the Stamp of a s LESS
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Forty-six years ago, on July 18, 1980, an Indian rocket reached orbit for the first time. SLV-3 got there on its second try, after an ignominious first attempt earlier ended in the Bay of Bengal. On Saturday, on the same date, Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 did what SLV-3 needed two attempts to do – reach orbit and deposit its payloads precisely where they were meant to go – on its very first flight. It’s not clear if it were a planned coincidence of dates, but it’s hard not to read something into it. Skyroot is now the first Indian private company to have flown an orbital launch vehicle successfully, and it did so in a year that had, until Saturday, given India’s space sector very little to point to.
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