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Skyroot named its initial line of vehicles “Vikram” in honor of the Indian physicist Vikram Sarabhai, who is considered the father of the Indian space program. As a testbed for its technology, Skyroot worked on a suborbital version of its rocket, Vikram-S, from 2020 to 2022 and launched the 6-meter rocket in November of that year. The larger Vikram-1 rocket now nearing its debut consists of three solid-fueled stages, with the capability to place up to a half-metric ton of payload into low-Earth orbit.
Russia finally tastes success with Sarmat. Russia has announced a successful test of its long-delayed Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which President Vladimir Putin now says will be operationally deployed later this year, The War Zone reports. The weapon, developed to deliver multiple nuclear warheads over great distances, has a mixed record in testing so far and was once planned to be fielded in 2020.
All this makes this week’s announcements more significant, although they have yet to be independently verified. The test launch from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk region took place on Tuesday, according to the Kremlin. Around half an hour later, Russian officials said the missile hit its target at the Kura test range on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s Far East.
Righting the ship... The RS-28 Sarmat, known to NATO by the codename SS-29 Satan II, is Russia’s new-generation heavy ICBM, intended to replace the Soviet-era R-36M2 system (SS-18 Satan). The Sarmat is a silo-launched, liquid-fueled, nuclear-armed ICBM. The missile will reportedly have a host of capabilities intended to defeat ballistic missile defenses, but Russia has not built a good track record with the vehicle.
The first successful test launch of the Sarmat took place in 2022, also from Plesetsk. However, it was followed by a failed test launch in February 2023. A further test in September 2024 was also unsuccessful, leading to the destruction of the test silo at Plesetsk.
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