India on Thursday became the fourth country to successfully achieve an unmanned docking in space, a feat seen as pivotal for future missions as New Delhi cements its place as a global space power.
The United States, Russia and China are the only other countries to have developed and tested the docking capability.
“Spacecraft docking successfully completed! A historic moment,” the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said on X.
The Indian space agency’s mission, called the Space Docking Experiment (SpaDex), involved deploying two small spacecraft, weighing about 220 kilograms each, into low-earth orbit. The two spacecraft, called Target and Chaser, blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in southern Andhra Pradesh state on December 30 aboard an Indian-made PSLV rocket.
On Thursday, they conducted a rendezvous before docking together.
“Congratulations to our scientists at ISRO and the entire space fraternity for the successful demonstration of space docking of satellites. It is a significant stepping stone for India’s ambitious space missions in the years to come,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on X.
