India successfully conducts historic space-docking test

India’s space agency Isro for the first time successfully operated a spaceport by connecting two small spaceships.

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

This service is called SpaDeX explosion from Sriharikota launch pad in south India on 30 December. The two ships, fed on a single rocket, separated in space. The construction of the port, originally scheduled for January 7, has been postponed several times.

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

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was at the Isro office in Bangalore when the scientists conducted the experiment.

“It is a very important part of India’s future infrastructure in the coming years,” he wrote on X.

Federal Science Minister Jitendra Singh expressed relief that the port was “finally” done.

The two SpaDeX (short for Space Docking Experiment) ships are named SDX01 or Chaser and SDX02 or Target. Each weighs about 220kg (485lbs) and since its launch, it has been traveling through space at a carefully selected speed.

“They were thrown into space together but at the time of separation, they were put at different speeds so that they could build a distance of 10-20km between them,” said Mila Mitra, a former NASA scientist and co-founder of Delhi-based. space education company Stem and Space, told the BBC.

“During the ascent, the scientists drove them to cover the same distance so that they would meet,” he added.

The launch was originally scheduled for January 7, but Isro later delayed it by two days saying it “needs to do some more testing” before the launch.

Second, it said there had been a problem trying to bring the satellites closer together, but added that flights were safe.

On Sunday, Isro said scientists were able to reduce the distance between Chaser and Target first to 15 meters and then to 3 meters. He said that after the test, the spacecraft was “retracted to a distance” and that he was analyzing the data.

S Somanath, who was the Isro chief when SpaDeX (short for Space Docking Experiment) was launched and was overseeing its progress until he retired a few days ago, described the docking as “very complex” requiring high precision and coordination.

Initially, the two aircraft had to be in the same trajectory for the Chaser to begin approaching the Target.

On Thursday morning, scientists began by slowing down the two planes – bringing them closer together until they were three meters apart. Then their connectors were connected together.

In the next step, the two ships were wrapped properly, creating a ventilation system to transfer supplies or personnel, and complete the positioning.

An Isro official told the BBC that in the next two to three days, the mission will perform what is being considered one of its most important missions – it will transfer power from the Chaser to the Target.

This, Mr. Mitra, says is an indication that a spacecraft can be sent to serve another in space.

The test will demonstrate the “opening and separation of the two satellites”.

Ms Mitra said the mission will also test India’s capability in inter-satellite communication as during docking and relaunching, the spacecraft must communicate with the Earth station and each other to determine its location and speed.

The ships also have scientific instruments and cameras that will be deployed. Over the next two years, they will measure radiation in the atmosphere and monitor Earth’s environment.

Isro, which is known to support its missions, is also using a part of the rocket that carried SpaDeX into space – which is always space debris – to carry out the necessary tests on the orbit for three months.

Poem – short for PS4-Orbital Experiment Module – has 24 weights and has already performed two successful experiments.

The first showed the germination of seeds. Last week, Isro tweeted video that says “bean sprouts have revealed their first leaves in space in gravity”. Micro-gravity is the weightless state that exists in space.

Scientists say that’s good news because it means that future astronauts will be able to produce food for long periods of time.

The second test involves the robotic arm which, Ms Mitra says, is one of the most important parts of the rocket. A movie on Isro’s X account shows a robotic arm moving to pick up a piece of debris.

Ms Mitra says this arm “will play an important role in the construction of the space station as it can be used to photograph and place objects”. It will also help in Chandrayaan-4 – India’s next mission to the Moon which aims to collect and bring back samples of lunar soil, he adds.

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