‘Key to space ambitions’: India succeeds in historic space landing mission | Space News

New Delhi, India – India on Thursday morning successfully launched one more satellite, joining a small group of advanced space-faring nations to carry out a complex technological mission in zero gravity.

Only the United States, Russia and China have launched a space station, which allows different satellites to work as a team, coordinate their operations and share resources that cannot be operated in a single space.

India’s mission, called the Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX), took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh on December 30, carrying two satellites, called Chaser and Target.

Like India’s previous title holder – from landing on the moon’s most challenging part to launching a Mars mission – SpaDeX was built and put into space on a shoestring budget.

Astronauts and astrophysicists told Al Jazeera that docking expertise is “very important” to India’s space ambitions and future missions. But why is it a big deal?

Where does it place India’s space superpowers? And how does India keep local costs down?

What does SpaDeX do?

The Chaser and Target each weigh 220kg (485lb). After launching together on December 30, the two spacecraft 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, they tested many methods of preparing to land the ships.

Then, Chaser moved slowly towards his partner, Target, before they got married early Thursday morning. The docking attempt was earlier scheduled for January 7 but was delayed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) after it was found that there was too much drift between the twin satellites.

There were celebrations at the ISRO headquarters as Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the space agency for “successfully demonstrating the launch of satellites”.

Modi described the establishment of the port as “an important stepping stone for India’s space mission in the years to come”.

Why is docking important?

Ahead of the campaign, Jitendra Singh, India’s science and technology minister, said the campaign was “crucial to India’s future aspirations”. Singh was talking about a series of projects undertaken by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) which include sending a man to the moon by 2040, building India’s first space station, and sending an orbiter to Venus.

Docking technology will be critical to integrating the space station and crew missions, providing critical services including in-orbit refueling and assembling heavy infrastructure in microgravity.

“ISRO has shown that it is good at launching and putting things into orbit, as well as landing,” said astronomer Somak Raychaudhury, vice chancellor at Ashoka University on the outskirts of New Delhi. “Now, docking is an important part of future missions – and ISRO has now graduated to a very important level.”

In August 2023, the Indian Mission Chandrayaan-3 became the first in the world to come close to the South Pole of the moon. Since then, ISRO’s ambitions have only grown. The next phase of the lunar mission – Chandrayaan-4 – will involve a capsule that will collect samples from the moon and then land on a return spacecraft for a return trip to Earth.

“Missions like Chandrayaan-4 are so complex that they cannot be launched in one piece. It is very heavy and the pieces need to come together in space before landing on the moon to pick up moon rocks,” explained Raychaudhury.

Demonstrating its docking capabilities also enabled ISRO to offer services to others, Raychaudhury said.

Pallava Bagla, co-author of Reaching for the Stars: India’s Journey to Mars and Beyond, agreed that “ISRO needs to master this technology to work in the future.”

A unique addition to the SpaDeX equipment is the installation of twelve tests by non-governmental organizations, including local technology startups and educational institutions.

“By making this platform accessible [to the private sector]we are lowering barriers to entry and enabling more organizations to contribute to the space sector,” said Pawan Goenka, chairman of India’s space agency, the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre.

Bagla agreed.

“It is no longer the Indian government’s space agency,” he said of ISRO. “Now it’s an ecosystem in India where you have ISRO as the main player that is now holding private startups and institutions.”

‘Innovation, not saving’

While ISRO continues its quest for the stars, a report by Tracxn, a market intelligence platform, noted that funding for India’s private space sector has fallen by 55 per cent in 2024 to $59.1mn from $130.2m in 2023, the first decline in five years . . (Reuters reported that the drop comes amid a 20 percent global drop in investment in the space sector.)

Meanwhile, government funding for India’s space agency has increased. After the historic landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the moon and following the launch of the solar probe, Aditya-L1, the Indian government allocated the largest fund ever allocated to the country for future space projects – a cat of 10 billion (116 million dollars). ) – announced in October last year.

However, experts told Al Jazeera that these funds are still small considering the difficulties and ambitions of the upcoming projects.

The country’s space agency previously spent $74m on the Mars orbiter launch and $75m on last year’s Chandrayaan-3. In comparison, NASA’s Mars orbiter cost $582m in 2013 and the Russian lunar mission that crashed two days before Chandrayaan-3 cost $133m. Or look at the budgets of popular space-themed thrillers like Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar ($165m) and Alfonso Cuaron’s Dimension ($100m).

But is this a feature or a flaw of India’s space program?

Mylswamy Annadurai, who worked for 36 years at ISRO and served as director of its satellite centre, recalled the famous images of Indian scientists carrying rocket parts on bicycles in 1963, before the country’s first rocket launch.

“After completing its vision of providing education, health care, weather forecasting, and monitoring natural disasters, ISRO realized it was time to move on to dreams that no one dared to see,” Annadurai told Al Jazeera, recalling an interview with -APJ Abdul Kalam. , a famous space scientist and former president of India. “The next generation, we, thought – ‘Why can’t we jump?’

Annadurai went on to lead India’s first deep space mission, Chandrayaan-1, which made a significant discovery of water on the moon – and earned him the title of India’s “Moon Man”. He was also tasked with preparing project reports, including budget demands from the government.

“I knew very well that we cannot ask for a budget [that is] outside the purview of the Indian government. I needed to justify the cost to policy makers,” he said, explaining the rationale for spending a fraction of what other spacefaring countries spend on missions.

“I know my father’s abilities to finance my higher education,” added Annadurai, laughing. “We also took it upon ourselves to do the work [Chandrayaan-1] possible within that budget [3.8 billion rupees ($44m)] – and that ‘how’ question is the way of intelligent methods.”

Here is the way.

“We have built and flown only one hardware module, unlike four to five probes of other agencies,” Annadurai said, listing the ways in which Indian space scientists cut costs. “Using low quality vehicles, smart designs, charting long and slow journeys, and using less fuel.”

Then he joked.

“We’re the best people in terms of space programs but we’re second to everyone else when it comes to 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 for solving a problem using simple resources) is “one of the distinguishing features of ISRO’s mission”.

Yet he believes that the focus on the success of ISRO’s small budget is also a legacy of the Western media’s historical criticism and derision of India’s space efforts. In 2014, after India launched a Mars robotic probe, the New York Times published an infamous cartoon showing a farmer with a cow knocking on the door of a room labeled “Elite Space Club”, where well-dressed men live. The cartoon was called “racist” and the newspaper apologized after the controversy.

“We keep trying to justify ourselves by saying that we do it at a low cost. “ISRO has innovative ways and is making sure that it uses resources in an economical way,” said Raychaudhury.

But ISRO should also get credit for its innovations, he added.

“This budget adjustment is now becoming an obstacle,” said Raychaudhury.

“Innovation should be the property of ISRO, not savings.”