How Skyroot gave India a private rocket to reach orbit

BENGALURU: Somewhere inside the payload bay of the rocket that lifted off from the First Launch Pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) on Saturday morning, tucked among satellites and sensors, rode an 18-karat gold rocket no bigger than a matchbox. It carried tiny sculpted likenesses of three men who never lived to see this day — Vikram Sarabhai, CV Raman and APJ Abdul Kalam — the scientists whose names Skyroot Aerospace has spent years borrowing for its engines and rockets. It was a strange kind of cargo for a company attempting one of engineering’s hardest feats: reaching orbit on the very first flight of an all-new rocket. By the time the countdown reached zero, Skyroot didn’t need luck. It needed nine years of it having already been spent — on carbon-composite layup rooms, 3D-printing labs, and hundreds of static-fire tests most of India never heard about.