“Docking successfully completed! A historic moment”, says ISRO
“Docking successfully completed! A historic moment”, says ISRO
Dip Saha Chowdhury, 16th January 2025: Another achievement for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in space. After nurturing the new life on space ISRO has completed their SpaDEX mission on 16th January 2025. At 10.40am IST ISRO has officially announced the completion of the program with success in their X (formerly Twitter handle). ISRO says, “India docked its name in space history! … ISRO’s SpaDeX mission accomplishes historic docking success. Proud to witness this moment!” in the context of entering the elite club of international space agencies by being the fourth country of the world to be successful in docking two airships in space.
The SpaDeX started its journey on 30th December 2024 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Srihari Kota. The vehicle that used to carry the two satellites was PSLV-C60. Two satellites named SPADEX-A and SPADEX-B of 220kgs were set to merge in the space using Bharatiya Docking System (BDS). The cost of the mission is 370cr INR. The completion of the mission was proposed on 9th January but due to some technical glitches it had been rescheduled to 16th January. After the completion of the mission India becomes the 4th country in the world after USA, Russia and China to complete the outerspace docking. In this mission two modules were sent to space SDX01 and SDX02 where SDX01 is a chaser and SDX02 is a target. The main challenge was to decrease the distance from 5km to 3m in six steps. After the success of this mission India is set to go for Gaganyaan mission, a mission to send human in space. It gave a special boost to the upcoming Chandrayan-4 mission in 2027.
Hon’ble PM Narendra Modi, also the minister of e Departments of Space and Atomic Energy hails ISRO in their achievement by addressing, “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.” On x. ISRO started its journey under the name of Indian Committee on Space Research (INCOSPAR) in 1962 on the recommendation of scientist Vikram Sarabhai but later named as Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO) in 1969. It is said proudly that the first rocket was taken to the launchpad in cycle and cart due to the low budget and now it is one of the leading space agencies famous for its world records.
