India, July 19 -- From punching above its weight with a low-cost Mars orbiter mission to establishing itself firmly in the club of elite space-faring nations with its Moon-lander, India has enough claims to space superstardom. The foundation was laid, of course, with the early decision to have a State-run space programme. Now, the successful testing of Vikram-1, India's first private sector orbital launcher that took off from Sriharikota on Saturday, shows where the next chapter of the country's space story will be written. With Saturday's launch, India became the third country in the world, after the US and China, to have private-sector capacity in orbital launch - a critical threshold demonstrating technological sophistication.

The imp...