SSLV liftoff
India’s Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) lifted off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre Aug. 6 on its inuagural flight, but failed to place its payload of two smallsats into the proper orbit.

For all the focus on the difficulty in successfully launching rockets, an even bigger challenge may be the transition to operations and, ultimately, profitability.

This post is only available to members.

Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...