Indian private rocket company Skyroot Aerospace‘s Vikram-1 reached orbit on July 18 powered in part by a cluster of 3D printed engines, a detail that turns India’s first private orbital launch into a milestone for additive manufacturing as much as for spaceflight.
The rocket’s fourth stage, a liquid-propellant Orbital Adjustment Module, ran on Raman-1 engines capable of restarting in a vacuum, which Skyroot used to place its payloads into precise, separate orbits. The company calls it India’s first fully 3D printed orbital engine.
Vikram-1 lifted off from the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, reached a 450km low Earth orbit in a 16-minute flight, and deployed six payloads under a mission Skyroot named Aagman, Sanskrit for “arrival.”
The launch made the startup the first private Indian company to reach orbit, and put India alongside the United States and China as the only countries with a private company capable of orbital launch.
Why Skyroot printed the engine
According to Skyroot, moving from cast and machined engines to 3D printed ones cuts production time from months to days per unit. The Raman-1 engines were built alongside carbon-composite airframes and modular avionics, a combination the company frames as central to the economics of the market it’s chasing: dedicated, on-demand small-satellite launches, booked to a specific orbit rather than shared as a fixed-schedule rideshare.
Faster engine production means Skyroot can iterate designs and build rockets on a tighter cycle, the company says it can turn out one complete rocket a month at its Hyderabad factory, a cadence that would be difficult to sustain with conventionally cast and welded engines.
The launch also lands squarely inside Skyroot’s own timeline: it came one day before the company’s eighth anniversary. Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka, both former ISRO engineers, founded Skyroot in 2018, reached India’s first private suborbital flight with Vikram-S in 2022, and became India’s first space-tech unicorn earlier this year at a $1.1 billion valuation.
Vikram-1 and Vikram-II, side by side
According to Skyroot’s own specifications, Vikram-1, the vehicle that just reached orbit, is rated to carry up to 350kg to low Earth orbit or up to 260kg to Sun-synchronous orbit. It supports both dedicated and rideshare missions with custom orbital deployment, the “cab to orbit” flexibility Skyroot has built its pitch around.
Skyroot has a second Vikram-1 test flight planned before moving to commercial launches next year, with Vikram-II to follow in 2027. Vikram-II trades the solid-and-printed-liquid combination for an advanced cryogenic engine and scales up considerably: up to 900kg to low Earth orbit and up to 600kg to Sun-synchronous orbit, close to triple Vikram-1’s capacity, while keeping the same carbon-composite structure and dedicated/rideshare flexibility.
A broader shift toward printed engines
Skyroot isn’t alone in betting its propulsion strategy on 3D printing, and the reasons other rocket makers give echo its own. Rocket Lab’s Rutherford engine, which powers every stage of its Electron rocket and has flown on more than 60 orbital launches, is built almost entirely from 3D printed components and recently passed 1,000 units produced, a milestone described as part of additive manufacturing in aerospace propulsion moving “from proof-of-concept to a global production race.”
India has its own parallel case. Rival Indian startup AgniKul developed Agnilet, a single-piece 3D printed Inconel engine for its Agnibaan launch vehicle, and says it can be printed in under four days and at roughly a tenth of the cost of conventional assembly, the same trade Skyroot is making, arrived at independently by a domestic competitor.
For launch companies competing on how quickly and cheaply they can get a rocket to the pad, that speed is the whole point. Cast-and-machine engine production ties a company’s launch cadence to a supply chain of forgings, welders, and inspection cycles; a printer tied to an in-house facility does not. Skyroot’s bet is that this is what actually determines who wins the small-satellite launch market, not just who reaches orbit first.
3D Printing Industry is inviting speakers for its 2026 Additive Manufacturing Applications (AMA) series, covering Energy, Healthcare, Automotive and Mobility, Aerospace, Space and Defense, and Software. Each online event focuses on real production deployments, qualification, and supply chain integration. Practitioners interested in contributing can complete the call for speakers form here.
To stay up to date with the latest 3D printing news, don’t forget to subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter or follow us on LinkedIn.
Explore the full Future of 3D Printing and Executive Survey series from 3D Printing Industry, featuring perspectives from CEOs, engineers, and industry leaders on the industrialization of additive manufacturing, 3D printing industry trends 2026, qualification, supply chains, and additive manufacturing industry analysis.
Featured image shows Vikram-1 Test Flight-1: Mission Aagaman. Photo via Skyroot Aerospace.
