♦ Former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman S Somanath was appointed honorary chief technical advisor at Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace on 26 June 2025.

♦ Somanath will advise Skyroot as it prepares for the launch of its Vikram-1 launch vehicle.

♦ The 23-meter-tall rocket is India's first carbon-composite space launch vehicle and features a liquid-engine-powered Orbital Adjustment Module that will precisely manoeuvre in the vacuum for last-mile delivery of satellites.

♦ With Somanath at the helm of the national space agency, India achieved a historic soft landing near the Moon’s South Pole with the Chandrayaan-3 mission, launched Aditya-L1 (India’s first dedicated solar mission), developed and deployed the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV), and conducted successful landing experiments of the Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV-LEX), alongside several successful missions deploying satellites in Earth’s orbit.