India’s ISRO is doing a successful mission of space stationing

by Nivedita Bhattacharjee

BENGALURU (Reuters) – India on Thursday became the fourth country in the world to land a space station, a technological milestone that underscores its ambitions to expand its share of the fast-growing $400 billion global space market.

At around 9 am IST (0330 GMT), the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) conducted the long-awaited Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX), an agency spokesperson said.

ISRO’s two satellites, Target and Chaser – each roughly the size of a large refrigerator – successfully docked with each other and undocked after a series of complex orbital trajectories.

Indigenous technology, critical to satellite surveillance, space station operations, and interplanetary missions, positions India to play an important role in commercial and space exploration frontiers.

“India has ambitious goals planned and to achieve those is an important technology that we need to have. Various activities like building a space station need to be assembled in space, which is not possible without space station,” said Indian astronomer Jayant Murthy.

The mission has been postponed twice before – first because the docking procedure needed to be further verified by ground simulation, and later because of the problem caused by the large drift between the satellites.

SpaDeX, launched on Dec. 30 from India’s main spaceport, used an Indian-made rocket to put satellites into orbit. Among the various payloads and experiments were eight cowpea seeds that ISRO had sent into space on a rocket to test plant growth in microgravity conditions, which germinated within four days of the mission’s launch.

The mission will also demonstrate electrical power transfer between docked spacecraft, an important capability for applications such as space robotics, composite spacecraft control and post-launch payloads.

Such technology is essential for missions that require the launch of multiple rockets to achieve shared objectives.

Exploration and marketing is an important part of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to position the country as a global powerhouse.

The successful SpaDeX campaign is “an important step in India’s quest for power in the coming years,” Modi said at X on Thursday.

ISRO focuses on deep space exploration and private sector commercialization, with projects including solar studies, orbital astronauts and planetary protection, in partnership with NASA.

Statistics are important. While the global commercial real estate market is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2030, India’s current share is only 2%, or $8 billion. The government aims to increase this to $44 billion by 2040.

(Reporting by Nvedita Bhattacharjee; Editing by Sudipto Ganguly and Jamie Freed)