50 years since Aryabhata: the lift-off that launched India’s satellite odyssey April 19, 2025 When thrusters of the Soviet rocket carrier Interkosmos fired Aryabhata successfully into space from the Kapustin Yar cosmodrome in 1975, it was a historic lift-off that launched India’s satellite odyssey. Fifty years later, today the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) has built 131 satellites, 51 of which are presently in orbit. Named after the ancient astronomer, Aryabhata was the country’s first indigenously built satellite launched from Russian soil on April 19, 1975. Interestingly, it took just 30 minutes after the launch for the first signals to be relayed back to the Indian ground station located in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota, located about 5,000 km away from the Soviet military rocket launch complex. The Rohini Sounding Rocket Experiment and subsequent experiments since 1963 from the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station in Thiruvananthapuram, established by Vikram Sarabhai, tasted success multiple times, but Isro’s plan of designing and building its own satellite launch vehicle (SLV) was still at the drawing board. This meant …