The story so far: The Vikram-1 rocket, built by the Hyderabad firm Skyroot, shot through the sky a little past noon on July 18, 2026. The seven-storey rocket lifted off ISRO’s First Launch Pad at Sriharikota and, a little over fifteen minutes later, placed its payloads in an orbit roughly 450 km above the earth. The rocket was Aerospace, and the mission — named Aagaman, Sanskrit for “arrival” — made India only the third country, after the United States and China, whose private industry can reach orbit on its own launch vehicle.

Rocket engines have traditionally been forged, machined, welded from dozens of parts. 3D printing, which engineers call additive manufacturing, inverts this. A laser fuses metal powder layer upon layer, building the part up from nothing. There are some real advantages to this approach. An engine printed as one piece sheds the bolts, seals and joints where conventional engines leak and fail; when Skyroot test-fired its Raman engine in 2020, it said the fully printed injector halved the mass and cut components and lead time by 80% against conventional manufacture.