The PSLV carried two small spacecraft—Chaser and Target, each weighing approximately 220 kg—into a 470 km circular orbit. The SpaDeX mission will help India develop and demonstrate the satellite’s docking and undocking—crucial to the country’s ambitious plans for bringing back samples from the Moon through the Chandrayaan-4 mission and building a Bhartiya Antariksh Station (BAS).
“SpaDeX because of its small size and mass is even more challenging due to the finer precision required for the rendezvous and docking manoeuvres compared to docking two large spacecraft. This mission will serve as a precursor for autonomous docking needed for future lunar missions, such as Chandrayaan-4, without relying on GNSS from Earth,” the space agency said.
ISRO added that the two spacecraft will gradually reduce their separation from 20 km to just a few meters before attempting the actual docking. Sources said that the process could take up to a week to 10 days time from the launch. With the success of this mission, India will become a part of an elite four-member group in the world to possess space docking technology.
Post the experiment, the spacecraft will carry out other functions such as power transfer experiments and payload operations. The mission also aims to demonstrate the ability to manage and coordinate multiple spacecraft in orbit.
Post the docking of the spacecraft the spent stage of the fourth stage of PSLV repurposed as the PSLV Orbital Experimental Module (POEM-4) will deploy 24 scientific experiments into space. 14 of these payloads are from ISRO and its research facilities and 10 payloads are from various Non-Government Entities (NGEs) comprising academia and startups that have been received through IN-SPACe.
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Chairman IN-SPACe, Pawan Goenka said, “By making this platform accessible, we are reducing entry barriers and enabling a wider range of entities to contribute to the space sector. Missions like these will be instrumental in capacity building by enabling NGEs to get their payloads space qualified, thus augmenting their future satellite launch missions.”
