India's first privately-developed rocket reaches orbit on dramatic debut launch

India's first fully commercial satellite launcher reached orbit Saturday when Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 completed its successful debut flight, per Ars Technica. After a half-hour delay to resolve a technical issue, the rocket lifted off from Sriharikota Island in the Bay of Bengal and climbed to an orbit two hundred eighty miles high. Measuring seventy-two feet tall, Vikram-1 can carry payloads up to seven hundred seventy pounds to low-Earth orbit, making it larger than Rocket Lab's Electron, the world's most successful dedicated small satellite launcher. Indian space officials celebrated it as a grand success.

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