BENGALURU: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Saturday corrected the drift anomaly between the two Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX) satellites by closing the distance between them to 230 metres.
This puts the two satellites, SDX01 (the chaser) and SDX02 (the target) on the way to the much-awaited docking, although ISRO did not specify when that would happen.
ISRO took to ‘X’ on Saturday evening, stating, “Arrested at Inter Satellite Distance (ISD) of 230 m, all sensors (of SDX01 and SDX02) are being evaluated. Spacecraft’s health is normal.”
Successful docking — wherein one spacecraft attaches to the other to facilitate transfer of astronauts, supplies and equipment — is crucial for future space missions, especially with ISRO planning India’s own space station by 2035 and future manned lunar missions by 2040.
The docking between SDX01 and SDX02 was initially scheduled to take place on January 7. However, while making the manoeuvre to reach 225 metres from the then distance of 500 metres between satellites, the drift was found to be “more than expected, post non-visibility period. The planned docking was then postponed.
ISRO then scheduled the docking some time on January 9, but found the inter-spacecraft distance to be 1.5 km and put them on a hold mode. The space agency on Saturday then brought the two spacecraft to a distance of 230 metres of each other and put them on hold.
The SpaDeX mission, undertaken at the cost of Rs 375 crore, was launched by ISRO’s PSLV-C-60 rocket on December 30 night from Sriharikota.