New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the Infinity Campus of Hyderabad-based New Space startup Skyroot Aerospace via video conferencing. The event will also see Skyroot revealing the Vikram I rocket, the orbital launch vehicle for small satellites. The state-of-the-art facility sprawls across 200,000 square feet and is built for designing, developing, integrating and testing multiple launch vehicles, with the capacity to produce one orbital rocket every month. Skyroot demonstrated its technology with the Vikram-S launch in November 2022, which was a suborbital flight. The startup was founded by alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology and former ISRO scientists Pawan Chandana and Bharath Dhaka.

The Infinity Campus is thesecond manufacturing facility for Skyroot, that already operates the Max-Q campus spread across 60,000 square feet. The Vikram I is a sophisticated launch vehicle whose elements Skyroot has been testing and refining. The rocket features a steerable nozzle to control the direction of the thrust, as against the flaps and rudders used by aircraft. The payload fairing to protect the passengers during the journey through the lower atmosphere of the Earth has to be shed rapidly, with Skyroot testing the separation mechanism. Skyroot has also tested the retro motors for stage separation, as well as the reaction control system. The Vikram I is currently scheduled to fly in February 2026.

Two New Space startups from India have demonstrated their launch vehicles in suborbital flights, Skyroot Aerospace and Chennai-based Agnikul Cosmos. Both of these startups were expected to be launching an orbital flight every quarter by now. However, they are both scheduled to execute their first orbital flights in the next year. A number of New Space startups are also developing launch vehicles for small satellites, including Hyderabad-based Abyom Spacetech and Defence, Bengaluru-based EtherealX, Pune-based Astrophel Aerospace and Ahmedabad-based Omspace.