New Delhi:
India docked two satellites in space on Thursday, a key milestone for the country’s ambitions of a space station and manned Moon mission. “India docked its name in space history,” said the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on X. ISRO shared a behind-the-scenes video today to showcase the lead-up to the historic feat – dubbed as SpaDeX, or Space Docking Experiment.
The video shows a packed mission control room for the coverage of the orbital docking.
A man was heard explaining the whole process: “The mission director will be giving a go-ahead for the subsequent motion of spacecraft from 3 meters till docking. The command will be given for the subsequent phase wherein the spacecraft starts at three meters. With a constant velocity of 10 mm per second, it is approaching other spacecraft for docking to take place.”
ISRO successfully completed docking of two SPADEX satellites (SDX-01 & SDX-02) in the early hours of 16 January, 2025.#SPADEX #ISRO pic.twitter.com/UJrWpMLxmh
— ISRO (@isro) January 17, 2025
The satellites, weighing 220 kilograms each, blasted off on December 30, last year, on a single rocket from Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota launch site. Later they separated.
The two satellites were manoeuvred back together on Thursday in a “precision” process resulting in a “successful spacecraft capture”.
Back at the control room, the man announced, amid a round of applause, “The capture event is nominal… Both the spacecraft are captured. the capture has been completed.”
Congratulating everyone involved in the mission for accomplishing the “historic docking for the first time in the country”, ISRO chairman V Narayanan said, “During the last 15 days, excellent dedicated activities were carried out and today we have got a historic docking and on this occasion, let me congratulate each one of you. Today, we are a proud nation carrying this technology with us which is required for our future missions, including Chandrayaan-4, crewed mission to moon. This is the first stepping stone towards those important activities”.
The docking experiment is crucial for the smooth conduct of the country’s ambitious future missions, including Chandrayaan-4, Gaganyaan, setting up a space station and landing an astronaut on the moon. Last October, the government announced that India will have its own Space Station by 2035, known as the “Bharatiya Antriksh Station”.
The PSLV C60 rocket carrying two small satellites, SDX01 (Chaser) and SDX02 (Target), along with 24 payloads, had lifted off from the first launchpad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, and about 15 minutes after liftoff, the two small spacecraft weighing about 220 kg each were launched into a 475-km circular orbit as intended.
India has become the fourth country to achieve the milestone after Russia, the United States and China.
Two earlier docking attempts by ISRO were postponed due to technical issues.
