Priyanka Gandhi Applauds ISRO for Milestone Spadex Mission
New Delhi: Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Tuesday congratulated the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on the successful launch of the Spadex mission, saying the space space agency has created history and the mission will prove to be a milestone for the establishment of the Indian space station and the success of Chandrayaan-4. The Congress MP said that after this mission, India has become the fourth country in the world to have space docking technology, he said that the dream that India had dreamed of six decades ago is being fulfilled today.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra wrote in a post on X on social media, "ISRO has created history in the world of space by successfully launching Mission Spadex. This mission will prove to be a milestone for the establishment of the Indian Space Station and the success of Chandrayaan-4. With this, India has become the fourth country in the world to have space docking technology. The dream that India had dreamed of six decades ago is being fulfilled today. Heartiest congratulations to all scientists, engineers and people of the country.
On Monday, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched PSLV-C60 with Spadex and innovative payloads from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. ISRO's year-end mission is historic as it seeks to achieve the rare feat of either docking or merging or linking two satellites together in space. The project has been named the "Space Docking Experiment" (Spadex). The performance of the first phase was normal. The Spadex mission is a cost-effective technology demonstration mission for performing docking in space using two small spacecraft launched by PSLV.
The primary objective of the Spadex mission is to develop and demonstrate the technology required for merging, docking and undocking two small spacecraft (SDX01, which is the chaser, and SDX02, which is the nominal target) into low Earth orbit. This technological challenge has been mastered by only a few countries so far and the indigenous technology used for this mission is called the "Indian Docking System". The docking technology is crucial for long-term missions such as Chandrayaan-4 and the planned Indian space station. It is also important for the eventual manned "Gaganyaan" mission.