With Vikram-S, India joins the ‘private rocket’ club: Which other countries have achieved this feat?

India launched its first private rocket, Vikram-S, from the spaceport in Sriharikota on Friday (18 November), marking the successful entry of the private sector into the country’s space industry.

Developed by four-year-old Hyderabad-based startup Skyroot Aerospace, the 6-metre tall launch vehicle Vikram-S is named after Vikram Sarabhai, the father of India’s space programme.

“Mission Prarambh is successfully accomplished. Congratulations”, ISRO wrote on Twitter.

Hailing the lift-off, Pawan Goenka, Chariman of the country’s space regulator, Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (INSPACe), said from ISRO’s Mission Control Center, “I am happy to announce the successful completion of Mission Prarambh, The Beginning, by Skyroot aerospace”.

The launch vehicle transported three payloads developed by Andhra Pradesh-based N Space Tech India, Chennai-based startup Space Kids and Armenian BazoomQ Space Research Lab.

This accomplishment bears testimony to the immense talent of our youth, who took full advantage of the landmark space sector reforms of June 2020. @SkyrootA pic.twitter.com/5M8hqG2cqD

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) November 18, 2022

It achieved an altitude of 89.5 km and a range of 121.2 km, “exactly what was planned by Skyroot Aerospace,” said Goenka.

According to PTI, the launch vehicle is “one of the world’s first few all-composite rockets that has 3-D printed solid thrusters for spin stability”.

With a successful maiden attempt by a private Indian company into space, New Delhi has joined a list of nations whose private space agencies are capable of building and launching rockets. Here are a few of them.

ALSO READ: New ‘Prarambh’: The successful launch of Vikram-S, India’s first private rocket, and its significance

SpaceX

Even though Elon Musk seems yet to find his footing with Twitter, his space venture SpaceX can boast of many successes.

In December 2015, Falcon 9 rocket successfully travelled into space and landed vertically.

The Falcon Heavy rocket, which was first launched in February 2018, carried a Tesla Roadster as a payload.

SpaceX is now working on Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), renamed Super Heavy in 2018. While the transportation part of the craft, which was earlier called Big Falcon Spaceship (BFS), is now Starship, reports The Verge. 

This rocket is being developed to pursue manned missions to Mars, as per Earth.com.

Blue Origin

Founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2000, Blue Origin has launched New Shepard, a reusable rocket, several times.

As per The Verge, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is “more complex” than New Shepard. The former is designed to cover higher altitudes and is much faster.

In 2016, the company had announced the orbital rocket, New Glenn.

United Launch Alliance

A joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance, builds Atlas V rockets.

The launch vehicle provides a platform for multiple commercial ventures to send their crafts or crew capsules into space, as per How Stuff Works website.

Orbital Sciences Corp.

Antares rocket with the Cygnus cargo spacecraft aboard lifted off the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), NASA Wallops Flight Facility, in September 2013.

The rocket was built by Virginia-based Orbital Science Corp.

In 2018, the US company was acquired by Northrop Grumman group. Orbital ATK is now known as Northrop Grumman Space Systems.

In November 2022, Antares 230+ rocket placed a Cygnus cargo spacecraft into orbit which eventually arrived at International Space Station.

Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA)

German company Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) carried out its useful maiden flight of RFA One rocket in July last year.

The “staged combustion” system of the rocket is used by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, reports France 24.

Joern Spurmann, RFA’s operational director, had said last year that it allows “30 per cent more payload to be put into orbit”.

Lin Industrial

Russia’s Lin Industrial Taymyr-1A is expected to be launched in 2025, as per NewSpace.

The Moscow Times reported in 2017 that Lin Industrial wants to become the first company to challenge Russia’s monopoly on the space industry through their Taimyr rocket.

Success Rockets, Cosmocourse, S7 Space are some other private Russian companies invested in space exploration.

Galactic Energy

Galactic Energy, a Beijing-based aerospace company, launched CERES-1 Y2 in January 2022. The launch vehicle had delivered five satellites into orbit, according to CGTN.

i-Space

i-Space company is China’s first private space company to orbit a satellite.

On 25 July 2019, the company’s Hyperbola-1 (Y1) rocket, also known as Shian Quxian-1, sent two satellites into low Earth orbit, as per Pagan Research.

LinkSpace

China’s LinkSpace was the first private company to focus on vertical takeoff and vertical landing (VTVL) rocket and reusable technology, reports CGTN.

The firm said in May this year that it has carried out a “static fire test of its Reusable Launch Vehicle T6 (RLV-T6) rocket using new methane-fueled engines" in Jiangyin, as per Space.com.

ArianeSpace

France-based company ArianeSpace has said it expects to launch its first Ariane 6 rocket by the end of the fourth quarter of 2023, Reuters reported.

The company bosts of being the world’s first commercial launch service provider.

Its Ariane 5 rocket had carried the Eutelsat Konnect VHTS satellite from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana in September this year.

Ariane 5 is part of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Arianespace programme.

Interstellar Technologies (IST)

Japan’s Interstellar Technologies (IST) builds MOMO sounding rocket.

In 2020, its MOMO- 5 rocket had failed to reach outer space due to a malfunction.

With inputs from agencies

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