Skyroot Aerospace, owned by Pawan Kumar Chandana, is the first privately held firm in India to construct space rockets. Its goal is to democratise access to space by developing cost-effective and dependable launch vehicles.
He was born in Hydrabad, Telangana, in 1991. Pawan Kumar Chandana, an IIT-Kharagpur alumni, holds a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering as well as a Master’s degree in thermal science and engineering under the dual degree programme.
In September 2012, he began working as a scientist at ISRO’s rocket design centre (VSSC) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. He spent five years at ISRO developing one of the largest and heaviest launch vehicles built in India, the GSLV Mk-II rocket. For $200, he worked as a system engineer on the booster rocket for the GSLV Mk-3. He was assigned as the Deputy Project Manager of the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle before leaving ISRO in June 2018. (SSLV)
On June 12, 2018, he co-founded Skyroot Aerospace in Hyderabad, India, alongside former ISRO scientist Naga Bharath Daka. They established the company with the assistance of Vasudevan Gnana Gandhi, an Indian rocket scientist, CureFit founders Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagor, and other entrepreneurs.
Pawan married Nirupama Chandana on October 10, 2019.
On July 30, 2020, Skyroot Aerospace tested Raman-1, a hypergolic-fuel upper-stage engine. The engine was named Raman after the Indian physicist C. V. Raman. Skyroot Aerospace became the first Indian private enterprise to test this type of engine after testing Raman-1.
Skyroot Aerospace signed a memorandum of understanding with Dhruva Space, an Indian aerospace firm, on November 20, 2020.
Skyroot Aerospace tested the Kalam-5 solid-fuel rocket engine on December 22, 2020. Solar Industries operated a private testing facility in Nagpur where the testing took place. The rocket engine was named after A. P. J. Kalam, and the 5 in the name Kalam-5 stands for 5.3 kN of peak sea level thrust.
Skyroot Aerospace became the first Indian start-up to access ISRO’s facilities and expertise in September 2021, after signing an agreement with the Department of Space of ISRO, and the business can test its carrier rocket systems and subsystems. Skyroot Aerospace was named seventh among the top 25 developing firms in India on Linkedin’s 2021 top Startups List at the same time.
Chandana was named one of India Today’s top 100 young achievers in 2022 and appeared on the cover of India Today Magazine.
Pawan Kumar Chandana is known as India’s Elon Musk.
He has expertise in a wide range of software and hardware technologies, including Abaqus, AutoCAD, Modeling, ANSYS, Matlab, Catia, and others.
In July 2019, he delivered a TEDx talk titled “Space Colonization – The Future of Humanity.” In December 2019, he delivered another TEDx talk titled “Not Passion, Obsession is the Key.”
– In an interview, when Pawan Kumar Chandana was asked about future plans and the ultimate goal of Skyroot Aerospace, he replied –
“The toughest problem to be solved in the next decade is to reduce the cost of launching satellites or humans to space. This is where we are focusing. Once cost drops drastically, it will open new frontiers for space-based services. The goal is to create a space-based economy. Today we have an earth-based economy. We feel that resources are only available on earth, and that is because we cannot go to space at a very low cost. In the long run, we want space flights to be as cheap as air flights so that anybody can go to space. Either for space tourism or to utilize the resources there. Space has plenty of planets, comets, asteroids, and a lot of metals and resources readily available. Going to space becomes easier when it becomes existential. We can create a space-based economy where human beings can travel and live. Expanding humanity out into space is the ultimate goal.”
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