India successfully conducts historic space-docking test

BBC:

Indian space agency Isro has for the first time successfully conducted space docking by joining together two small craft in space.

The technology is essential for the country’s future ambition to build an Indian space station and put a person on the Moon.

The mission called SpaDeX blasted off from Sriharikota launch pad in southern India on 30 December. The two spacecraft, launched on a single rocket, separated in space. The docking process, initially scheduled for 7 January, was rescheduled a number of times.

On Thursday morning, the space agency announced that it had created history by becoming only the fourth country in the world with such technology after United States, Russia and China.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was at the Isro office in Bangalore as scientists carried out the test.

“It is a significant stepping stone for India’s ambitious space missions in the years to come,” he later posted on X.

Federal Science Minister Jitendra Singh expressed relief that the docking had “finally” happened.

The two spacecraft on SpaDeX (short for Space Docking Experiment) are called SDX01 or the Chaser and SDX02 or the Target. Each weigh about 220kg (485lbs) and since their launch, they were travelling in space at a carefully chosen speed.

“They were thrown into space together but at the time of separation, they were placed with different velocity to allow them to build a distance of 10-20km between them,” Mila Mitra, a former Nasa scientist and co-founder of Delhi-based space education company Stem and Space, told the BBC.