If successful, India will become the fourth country to achieve the feat.
India has launched its first space mission on an Indian-made rocket, in an attempt to become the fourth country to achieve the technology.
The mission, called the Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX), took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Andhra Pradesh state at 16:30 GMT on Monday on the Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO) “workhorse” PSLV rocket.
About 15 minutes later, the mission manager declared the launch successful after the PSLV-C60 rocket reached a distance of about 470km (292 miles).
This work is considered very important future space missionsincluding satellites and the use of the country's space infrastructure. Space launch technology is essential when multiple rocket launches are required to achieve shared objectives.
India's mission involves placing two small ships, each weighing about 220kg (485 pounds), in a 470-km orbit. It will also demonstrate the transfer of electrical energy between the spacecraft, an important capability for applications such as space robots, integrated flight control and post-deployment payloads.
Each satellite carries an advanced payload, including a recording system and a radiation detector designed to measure the amount of electron and proton radiation in space, providing vital information for human space missions.
ISRO Chairman S Somanath said the actual testing of the docking technology could be done in about a week and indicated a target date of January 7. “The rocket has placed the satellites in the right orbit,” he said.
A successful demonstration will put India alongside the United States, Russia and China as the only countries to have developed and tested this technology.
For the first time in India, rockets and satellites were put together and tested at a private company called Ananth Technologies, instead of a government agency.
“Demonstrating this technology not only means joining the rare countries that have it, it also opens up the market for ISRO to be a co-launcher of various global missions that require storage or assembly in space,” he said. physicist Somak Raychaudhary of Ashoka University.
The PSLV's fourth stage, which usually turns into space debris, has been converted into a working unmanned laboratory. The last part of the rocket has been reconfigured as an orbital laboratory and will be used for various experiments.
“PSLV Orbital Experiment Module (POEM) is a practical solution provided by ISRO that allows Indian startups, academic institutions, and research organizations to test their space technologies without the need to launch satellites. By making this platform available, we are lowering the barriers to entry and enabling more organizations to support the space sector,” said Pawan Goenka, chairman of India's space agency.
The project is “crucial to India's future ambitions,” Jitendra Singh, the country's science and technology minister, said in preparation for the launch. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced plans last year to send a man to the Moon by 2040.
The most populous country in the world has a limited budget space program which is fast approaching a major event set by world powers.
In August 2023, India became only the fourth country to land a manned spacecraft on the Moon after Russia, the US and China.