New Delhi, India – India on Thursday morning linked one satellite to another, joining a small group of elite space-faring nations to carry out a challenging technical mission at zero gravity.
Only the United States, Russia and China have launched space missions, which allow satellites to operate as a group, coordinate their operations and share resources that cannot be carried on a single spacecraft.
India's mission, called the Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX), lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh on December 30, carrying two satellites, named Chaser and Target.
As India has gone head to grab the land still went – from landing on difficult phase of the month to start a Mission to Mars – SpaDeX was built and modified in space on a limited budget.
Astronauts and astronauts told Al Jazeera that the docking technology is “critical” to India's ambitions and future missions. But why are they so big?
Where does it place India vis-a-vis space superpowers? And how does India keep its position low?
What did SpaDeX do?
The Chaser and Target each weigh about 220kg (485lb). Launched together on December 30, the two satellites separated in space.
They flew 470km (292 miles) above Earth, where they were carefully placed in the same orbit – but about 20km (12 miles) apart. There, he tried different ways of managing the port.
Then, Chaser made a slow push to his partner, Target, before getting married early Thursday. The docking test was originally scheduled for January 7 but was delayed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) after the alignment between the two satellites became too apparent.
Celebrations erupted at the ISRO headquarters as Prime Minister Narendra Modi once again praised the space agency for its “successful satellite launch”.
Modi described the port as “the cornerstone of India's infrastructure for the coming years”.
Why is docking important?
In preparation for the project, Jitendra Singh, India's science and technology minister, said the project was “very important for India's future ambitions”. Singh was referring to several projects undertaken by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) which include sending a man to the moon by 2040, building a space base in India, and sending an orbiter to Venus.
Docking technology will be essential for the assembly of space stations and crewed missions, providing the necessary space to include refueling in orbit and the assembly of heavy equipment in microgravity.
“ISRO has shown that it is good at launching and putting things into orbit, as well as landing,” said astronaut Somak Raychaudhury, vice-chancellor of Ashoka University outside New Delhi. “Now, docking is a very important part of the upcoming missions – and ISRO is now completing their training at a very important level.”
In August 2023, the Indian mission Chandrayaan-3 became the first on Earth to land near the South Pole of the moon. Since then, ISRO's ambitions have only grown. The next phase of the lunar mission – Chandrayaan-4 – will include a capsule that will take samples from the moon and land it on a flight back to Earth.
“A mission like Chandrayaan-4 is so complex that it cannot be launched in one piece. It is very heavy and the pieces need to be assembled in space before they come to the moon to retrieve the moon rocks,” said Raychaudhury.
Demonstrating its landing capability also helped ISRO provide assistance to others, Raychaudhury added.
Pallava Bagla, co-author of Reaching for the Stars: India's Journey to Mars and Beyond, agreed that “ISRO needs to master this technology for future missions.”
A unique addition to the SpaDeX project is the inclusion of a dozen experiments conducted by non-governmental organizations, including space foundations and academic institutions.
“By making the platform accessible (to the general public), we are lowering the barriers to entry and enabling more organizations to support the space sector,” said Pawan Goenka, chairman of India's space watchdog, the Indian National Space Promotion. Authorization Center.
Bagla agreed.
“It is no longer the Indian government's space agency,” he said of ISRO. “Now it's an Indian place where you have ISRO as a major player who is now doing basic work with the private sector.”
'Innovation, not frugality'
As ISRO continues its search for the stars, a report by Tracxn, a market intelligence platform, said that revenue from Indian businesses will drop by 55 per cent in 2024 to $59.1mn from $130.2m in 2023, the first fall in the last five years. . (Reuters report (That decline comes amid a 20 percent global decline in aerospace sector revenue.)
Meanwhile, government funding for the Indian space agency has increased significantly. After the historic landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the moon and following the launch of a solar probe, Aditya-L1The Indian government committed the country's largest ever fund for future space projects – ₹10 billion ($116 million) – announced in October last year.
However, experts told Al Jazeera that the amount is still limited due to the challenges and ambitions ahead.
The country's space agency previously spent $74m on the Mars orbiter and $75m on Chandrayaan-3 last year. By comparison, NASA's Mars orbiter cost $582m in 2013 while the Russian lunar mission that crashed two days before Chandrayaan-3 landed cost $133m. Or look at the budgets of space thrillers like Christopher Nolan's Interstellar ($165m) and Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity ($100m).
But is this part or parcel of the Indian program?
Mylswamy Annadurai, who worked for 36 years at ISRO and became its space station manager, recalled famous images of Indian scientists carrying rocket parts on bicycles in 1963, before the country's first launch.
“Having completed its vision of education, healthcare, weather forecasting, and natural disaster management, ISRO realized it was time to move forward to a dream that no one dared to see,” Annadurai told Al Jazeera, recalling a conversation with APJ Abdul Kalam. , the famous space scientist and former president of India. “The next generation, we, thought – 'Why can't we move on?'”
Annadurai led India's first mission, Chandrayaan-1, which found lunar water on the moon – earning him the title of India's “Moonman”. He was also given the task of preparing work reports, including the amount required by the government.
“I knew very well that we could not ask for a budget (that is) beyond the limits of the Indian government. I had to explain the cost to the policy makers,” he said, explaining why he spends a fraction of what other countries that go to places push the mission.
“I know my father has the ability to support my higher education,” Annadurai added, laughing. “We also pushed ourselves to get the project (Chandrayaan-1) done within this budget (3.8 billion rupees ($44m)) – and the question of 'how' opened the door to strategic options.”
This is how it is.
“We only developed and launched one piece of hardware, as opposed to four or five testers with other organizations,” Annadurai said, citing ways Indian scientists are cutting costs. “Using low-cost vehicles, smart design, making longer and shorter journeys, and using less fuel.”
Then he laughed.
“We're second to none in terms of space programs but we're second to none in terms of salaries,” Annadurai said, laughing again, “and that's a good reason for the low cost.”
For Ashoka University's Raychaudhury, “jugaad” (an informal Hindi word meaning a solution to a problem using simple resources) is “one of the distinguishing features of ISRO's mission”.
However he believes that the focus on ISRO's budget performance is a legacy of a long history of criticizing the Western media and denigrating India's efforts. In 2014, after India launched a robotic exploration of Mars, The New York Times published disgusting pictures showing a farmer and a cow knocking on the door of a room called “Elite Space Club”, where eligible men live. The cartoon was called “racist” and the newspaper apologized after the controversy.
“We try to justify ourselves that we are doing this at a low cost. ISRO is innovative and ensures that it uses resources efficiently,” Raychaudhury said.
But ISRO should also be getting credit for its innovation, he added.
“This preparation of the budget has now become a barrier,” said Raychaudhury.
“Innovation should belong to ISRO, not fraud.”