New Delhi, India – India successfully docked one satellite with another on Thursday morning, joining a small group of elite spacefaring nations to accomplish the complex technical feat in zero gravity.
Only the United States, Russia and China have flown space docking missions, which allow individual satellites to work as a team, coordinating missions and sharing resources that a single spacecraft cannot carry.
India's mission, called the Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX), launched on December 30 from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in the country's southern Andhra Pradesh state, carrying two satellites, Chaser and Target.
Like India's previous high-profile space ventures — from landing on challenging sections of the moon to launching missions to Mars — SpaDeX was built and catapulted into space on a shoestring budget.
Space observers and astrophysicists told Al Jazeera that docking expertise is "critical" to India's space ambitions and upcoming missions. But why is this a big deal?
Where does India stand compared to space superpowers? How does India keep space costs low?
The Chaser and Target each weigh approximately 220 kilograms (485 pounds). After being launched together on December 30, the two satellites separated in space.
They fly 470 kilometers (292 miles) above Earth and are carefully placed in the same orbit, but about 20 kilometers (12 miles) apart. There, they tested a series of maneuvers in preparation for docking.
Chaser then slowly moved toward its partner, Target, joining in the early hours of Thursday morning. The docking attempt was originally scheduled for January 7, but the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) postponed the attempt after it found a larger-than-expected drift between the two satellites.
Celebrations were held at the ISRO headquarters, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulating the space agency for its "successful demonstration of satellite space docking."
Modi described the docking as "an important stepping stone for India's ambitious space missions in the coming years."
In the run-up to the mission, Indian Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh said the mission was "critical to India's future space ambitions." Singh was referring to a range of projects undertaken by ISRO, including putting humans on the moon by 2040, building India's first space station and launching an orbiter to Venus.
Docking technology is critical to assembling the space station and manned missions, providing critical facilities including on-orbit refueling and assembly of heavy infrastructure in microgravity.
"ISRO has proven that it is good at launching, putting objects into orbit and landing them," said astrophysicist Somak Raychaudhury, vice-chancellor of Ashoka University in suburban New Delhi. "Now, docking is an important part of the upcoming mission - ISRO is now stepping up to a very, very important level.”
In August 2023, India's "Chandrayaan-3" mission became the world's first mission 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 use a capsule to collect samples from the moon and then dock with a return spacecraft to return to Earth.
"A mission like Chandrayaan-4 is too complex to be launched in one go. It's too heavy and the pieces need to be held together in space before landing on the moon to scoop up lunar rocks," Ray Chowdhury explained.
Demonstrating its docking capabilities also enables ISRO to offer its services to others, Raychaudhury added.
Pallava Bagla, co-author of "Reaching for the Stars: India's Journey to Mars and Beyond," agrees that "ISRO needs to master this technology for future missions."
A unique addition to the SpaDeX mission is the inclusion of two dozen experiments from non-governmental entities, including aerospace technology startups and academic institutions.
Pawan Goenka, chairman of India's space regulator, National Space Promotion Agency and Indian Space Agency, said: "By making this platform open (to the private sector), we are lowering the barriers to entry and enabling wider Entities able to contribute to the aerospace sector” Authorization Center.
Baghra agreed.
“It is no longer the Indian government’s space organization,” he said of ISRO. "It is now an Indian space ecosystem, with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) as the major player, now dominated by private startups and institutions."
Even as ISRO continues to chase the stars, a report by market intelligence platform Tracxn states that funding for India's private space sector will plummet from $130.2 million in 2023 to $59.1 million in 2024, a 55% decline over the past five years. of the first decline. (This decline comes against the backdrop of a 20% drop in global investment in aerospace, according to Reuters.)
At the same time, government funding for the Indian Space Agency has surged. After the historic lunar landing of Chandrayaan-3 and the launch of the solar probe Aditya-L1, the Indian government has allocated the country's largest ever funding of Rs 1,000 crore ($116 million) for future space projects. announced last October.
However, experts told Al Jazeera that funding remains small given the complexity and ambition of the upcoming projects.
The country's space agency earlier spent $74 million to send a Mars orbiter and $75 million on last year's Chandrayaan-3. By comparison, NASA's Mars orbiter cost $582 million in 2013, and the Russian moon mission that crashed two days before the Chandrayaan-3 landing cost $133 million. Or look at the budgets of famous space thrillers like Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar ($165 million) and Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity ($100 million).
But is this a feature or a flaw of India’s space programme?
Mylswamy Annadurai, who has worked at ISRO for 36 years and serves as director of its satellite center, recalled the famous photo of Indian scientists on bicycles carrying rocket parts before India's first rocket launch in 1963.
“After completing its vision of providing education, healthcare, weather forecasting and monitoring natural disasters, ISRO realized that it was time to move towards dreams that no one dared to achieve,” Annadurai told APJ Abdul Kalam while recalling a conversation Al Jazeera, famous aerospace scientist and former President of India. "Our next generation is thinking - 'Why can't we transcend?'"
Annadurai then led India's first deep space mission, Chandrayaan-1, which discovered vital lunar water on the moon and earned him the title of India's "Moon Man". He is also responsible for preparing project reports, including the government's budget requests.
"I am very, very clear that we cannot ask for a budget that is beyond the scope of the Indian government. I need to justify the cost to policymakers," he said, explaining why the mission would be carried out at a fraction of what other space nations spend.
“I knew my father could afford to finance my higher education,” Annadurai added with a smile. “We also restricted ourselves to completing the mission (Chandrayaan-1) within the budget of 3.8 billion rupees ($44 million) – and the question of ‘how’ paved the way for an ingenious approach.”
Here's how.
"We have built and flown only one hardware module, unlike other agencies who have four to five testers," Annadurai said, listing ways Indian space scientists have cut costs. "Use modest launch vehicles, clever designs, chart longer, slower journeys, and use less fuel."
He then joked, “In terms of the space program, we’re number one, but in terms of wages, we’re number two,” Annadurai laughed again, “and that’s a pretty good reason for the low cost. "
For Ashoka University's Raychaudhury, "jugaad" - an informal Hindi term meaning a problem-solving approach using simple resources - is "one of the distinguishing features of ISRO's mission".
But he believes the focus on ISRO's low-budget success is also a legacy of historic criticism and ridicule of India's space efforts in the Western media. In 2014, after India launched a robotic probe to Mars, the New York Times published an infamous cartoon depicting a farmer with a cow knocking on the door of a room labeled "Elite Space Club." There were some men in suits sitting. The cartoon was called "racist" and the newspaper apologized after the controversy.
"We have been working hard to prove that our costs are low. ISRO has novel approaches and ensures that resources are used in a very economical manner," Raychaudhury said.
But ISRO should also be credited for its innovation, he added.
“This obsession with budgeting is now becoming a hindrance,” Raychoudhury said.
"Innovation should be the hallmark of ISRO, not frugality."