AgniKul set to launch India’s second privately built rocket

New Delhi: IIT-Madras incubated startup AgniKul Cosmos is all set to launch its 3D printed sub-orbital rocket Agnibaan SOrTeD later this month from its private launchpad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota.

The announcement of the launch window for India’s second privately built rocket was made by the Chennai-based space startup through a cryptic post on X.

“March 22-28, 2024,” AgniKul Cosmos said in a post on the social networking platform.

In August last year, AgniKul started the process of integrating its Agnibaan SubOrbital Technological Demonstrator (SOrTeD) at its private launchpad in Sriharikota.

Skyroot Aerospace, a Hyderabad-based space startup, had become India’s first private company to launch a sub-orbital rocket Vikram-S, which reached an altitude of 89.5 km in 155 seconds.

Skyroot plans to start launching small satellites in orbit later this year using the Vikram-1 rocket.

India’s space regulator IN-SPACe released an integrated manifesto last month for the next five quarters, which mentioned AgniKul’s SOrTeD launch in the last quarter of the current fiscal.

Agnibaan SOrTeD is a single-stage launch vehicle powered by AgniKul’s patented Agnilet engine, a 3D-printed, single-piece, 6 kilonewtons (kN) semi-cryogenic engine.

The Agnibaan rocket is a two-stage launch vehicle equipped to place payloads of up to 100 kg into a low earth orbit at a distance of 700 km.

Established in 2017 by aerospace engineers Srinath Ravichandran and Moin SPM, along with IIT-Madras faculty member Prof. Sathyanarayan R Chakravarthy, Agnikul emerged as the first Indian company to sign an agreement with ISRO in December 2020.