Isro mission succeeds, 2 satellites dock in space in 'historic moment'

'Significant stepping stone for India's ambitious space missions,' says Prime Minister Modi

India's space agency created history on Thursday when it successfully docked a satellite onto another. Only the United States, Russia and China have carried out such a complex operation in zero gravity before.

 

Docking is critical for the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) as it plans to have a space station by the end of the decade and send a manned mission to space called Gaganyaan likely later this year. Docking is crucial as it provides technology support for in-orbit refuelling and assembling heavy infrastructure in zero gravity. The complex process was attempted over the last fortnight, but it was in its fourth attempt this morning that Isro became successful. The mission is part of the Space Docking Experiment or SpaDeX.

 

"Spacecraft docking successfully completed! A historic moment...," Isro announced at around 10 am.

 

"Congratulations to our scientists at ISRO and the entire space fraternity for the successful demonstration of space docking of satellites. It is a significant stepping stone for India’s ambitious space missions in the years to come," said Prime Minister Narendra Modi on social media.

 

The SpaDeX mission lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh state on December 30, carrying two satellites named Chaser and Target. This is one of the major successes by India after the Chandrayaan mission to the Moon and its Mars mission. It was in August 2023 that India's Chandrayaan-3 landed on the Moon’s South Pole, becoming the first nation to achieve that feat. The country is now planning Chandrayaan-4 mission, which will include collecting samples from the Moon's surface by a spacecraft and then docking it back to a return flight to Earth.

 

Chaser and Target each weigh about 220 kilogram. After the launch, both these satellites flew around 470 km above Earth and were placed in the same orbit at a distance of 20 km, before the process started through a series of manoeuvres.

 

Though the docking was initially planned on January 7, it got delayed after a drift between the twin satellites was noted to be greater than expected. Isro used the indigenously developed Bhartiya Docking System to achieve this feat just before docking the satellites moved closer to each other at a speed of 10 millimeters per second.

 

In its previous attempt on January 12, both satellites moved closer and achieved what was termed as an "exciting handshake" in space. Isro later added that post docking, control of two satellites as a single object is successful. “Undocking and power transfer checks to follow in coming days,” it said.