Days after Skyroot Aerospace scripted history with the successful launch of Vikram-1, co-founder Pawan Kumar Chandana shared an emotional note dedicated to his father, revealing that the very first call he made after the rocket successfully reached orbit was to him.
"As everything slowly begins to sink in, and after finally getting some sleep last night, I wanted to share a small personal note," Chandana wrote in a social media post.
Recalling academic struggles
Recalling his academic struggles, Chandana said he was a bad student until Class 8, scoring just 51 marks in Mathematics and even failing another subject. He said he could never have imagined that he would one day study at an IIT or contribute to India's first privately developed rocket reaching orbit.
"He is the man who made my journey possible—with dreams for me far bigger than the ones I had for myself, and by simply never giving up on me," Chandana wrote about his father.
Emotional call after launch
Describing the emotional moment after the launch, Chandana said his father broke down in tears during the call.
"When I called him after the launch, he just cried. And cried. He couldn't speak a single word. But I understood every word he couldn't say," he wrote, adding that while he managed to hold back his tears when Vikram-1 reached orbit, he could not do so while writing about the moment.
He concluded the post by thanking his father and giving "a big shout-out to every dad who dreams big for their children—and never gives up on them."
The entrepreneur also shared a photograph with his father from one of his birthdays after starting Skyroot Aerospace.
Skyroot's historic milestone
Hyderabad-based space startup Skyroot Aerospace scripted history on July 18 by successfully launching Vikram-1, India's first privately developed orbital launch vehicle, marking a major milestone for the country's rapidly growing private space sector.
The Mission Aagaman rocket lifted off at 12:06 pm from the First Launch Pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC-SHAR), Sriharikota, after a brief planned hold from its original 11:30 am launch window to allow engineers to conduct additional checks.
The successful mission made Skyroot Aerospace the first private Indian company to place an indigenously developed rocket into orbit, opening the door for India's entry into the global private orbital launch market and significantly strengthening the country's commercial space capabilities.
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