New Delhi, India – On Thursday morning, India succeeded in docking one satellite on top of another, joining a small group of elite spacefaring countries that have carried out this complex technological feat in zero gravity.

Only the United States, Russia and China have performed space docking missions, which allow separate satellites to work as a team, coordinate their missions and share resources that cannot be carried on a single spacecraft.

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

Like previous Indian space projects that have grabbed headlines – from landing on a plane Part of the Moon Challenge To launch a Mars mission – SpaDeX was built and launched into the space on a limited budget.

Space observers and astrophysicists told Al Jazeera that the docking experience was of “extreme importance” for India’s space ambitions and upcoming missions. But why is it a big deal?

Where does India stand vis-à-vis the major powers in the field of space? How is India keeping its space costs low?

What did SpaDeX do?

Both the chaser and the target weigh about 220 kg (485 lb). After launching together on December 30, the two satellites separated in space.

They flew 470 kilometers (292 miles) above Earth, where they were carefully placed in the same orbit — but about 20 kilometers (12 miles) apart. There, they tested a range of maneuvers to prepare for docking.

Chesser then slowly pushed towards his partner, Target, before they joined in the early hours of Thursday. The docking attempt was earlier scheduled to take place on January 7, but the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) postponed it after it was observed that the drift between the two satellites was greater than expected.

Celebrations erupted at the ISRO headquarters while Prime Minister Narendra Modi also congratulated the space agency for the “successful demonstration of space docking of satellites”.

Modi described the docking process as “an important starting point for India’s ambitious space missions in the coming years.”

Why is docking important?

In the run-up to the mission, Jitendra Singh, India’s Minister of Science and Technology, said the mission was “vital to India’s future space ambitions.” Singh was referring to a host of projects undertaken by ISRO that 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 in space station assembly and crewed missions, providing critical facilities including in-orbit refueling and assembling heavy infrastructure in microgravity.

“ISRO has proven to be good at launching and putting things in orbit, as well as landing,” said astrophysicist Somak Raychaudhury, vice chancellor of Ashoka University on the outskirts of New Delhi. “Now, docking is an important part of the upcoming missions – and ISRO is now stepping up to a very important level.”

In August 2023 Indian Mission Chandrayaan-3 He became the first person in the world to land near the south pole of the moon. Since then, ISRO’s ambitions have increased. The next phase of the lunar mission – Chandrayaan-4 – will include a capsule that will collect samples from the Moon and then dock with a spacecraft for the return journey to Earth.

“Missions like Chandrayaan-4 are so complex that they cannot be launched in one piece. They are very heavy and the pieces have to be combined in space before landing on the Moon to pick up lunar rocks,” explained Raychaudhury.

Demonstrating its docking capabilities also enabled ISRO to provide services to others, Raychaudhury added.

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

A unique addition to the SpaDeX mission is the integration of twenty experiments conducted by non-governmental entities, including space technology startups and academic institutions.

“By making this platform accessible to everyone [to the private sector]“We are working to reduce barriers to entry and enable a wide range of entities to contribute to the space sector,” said Pawan Goenka, Chairman of India’s space regulatory body, the Indian National Space Promotion and Licensing Centre.

Bagla agreed.

“The Indian Space Organization is no longer affiliated with the Indian government,” he said of ISRO. “It has now become an Indian space ecosystem where you have ISRO as the major player which now has startups and private enterprises.”

“Innovation, not savings”

While ISRO continues to reach for the stars, a report by Tracxn, a market intelligence platform, noted that funding in India’s private space sector fell by 55 per cent in 2024 to $59.1 million from $130.2 million in 2023, the first decline In the past five years. (Reuters I mentioned The decline comes amid a 20 percent global decline in investment in the space sector.)

At the same time, government funding for the Indian Space Agency has increased significantly. After the historic landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the moon and after the launch of A Aditya-L1 solar probeThe Indian government has allocated the country’s largest-ever fund for future space projects – a 10 billion rupee ($116 million) fund – announced in October last year.

But experts told Al Jazeera that this money is still minimal, given the complexities and ambitions of the upcoming projects.

The Indian Space Agency had previously spent $74 million to send the spacecraft to Mars and $75 million to send the Chandrayaan-3 rover last year. By comparison, NASA’s Mars rover cost $582 million in 2013, while the Russian moon mission that crashed two days before Chandrayaan 3’s landing cost $133 million. Or you can look at the budget of popular space-oriented thrillers like Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar ($165 million) and Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity ($100 million).

But is this a feature or a bug of the Indian space programme?

Meleswamy Annadurai, who worked for 36 years at ISRO and served as director of its satellite centre, remembers famous photographs of Indian scientists carrying rocket parts on a bicycle in 1963, before the country’s first rocket was launched.

“After completing its vision of providing education, healthcare, weather forecasting and monitoring of natural disasters, ISRO realized that it was time to move forward towards dreams that no one dared to see,” Annadurai told Al Jazeera, recalling a conversation with APJ Abdul Kalam. Famous aviation scientist and former President of India. “We, the next generation, thought: Why can’t we go further?”

Annadurai went on to command India’s first deep space mission, Chandrayaan-1, which made the crucial discovery of lunar water on the Moon – earning him the nickname India’s “Moon Man”. He was also tasked with preparing project reports, including budget requirements from the government.

“I knew very clearly that we couldn’t ask for a budget [that is] Outside the scope of the Government of India. “I needed to justify the cost to policymakers,” he said, explaining why a fraction of what other spacefaring nations pump into missions is spent.

“I know my father’s ability to finance my higher education,” Annadurai added with a laugh. “We have also restricted ourselves to do the job [Chandrayaan-1] Possible within that budget [3.8 billion rupees ($44m)] This question of “how” paved the way for ingenious methods.

Here’s how.

“We have manufactured and launched only one unit of instrumentation, unlike four to five test instruments conducted by other agencies,” Annadurai said, listing ways in which space scientists in India have succeeded in cutting costs. “Using modest launch vehicles, ingenious designs, planning longer and slower flights, and using less fuel.”

Then he joked: “We’re second to none when it comes to space programs, but we’re second to everyone else when it comes to salaries,” Annadurai said, laughing again, “which is a reasonably good reason for the low costs.”

For Ashoka University’s Raychaudhury, jugaad (an informal Hindi term meaning a way to solve a problem using simple resources) is “one of the hallmarks of ISRO’s missions.”

However, he believes that the focus on ISRO’s low-budget successes is also a legacy of Western media’s historical criticism of India’s space efforts. In 2014, after India launched its robotic Mars probe, the New York Times published an infamous cartoon depicting a farmer and a cow knocking on the door of a room labeled the “Elite Space Club,” where suitably dressed men sat. He described the cartoon as “racist” and the newspaper apologized after the controversy.

“We are constantly trying to justify that we are doing this at a low cost. ISRO has new methods and makes sure that resources are used in a very frugal manner,” Raychaudhury said.

ISRO should also get praise for its innovations, he added.

“This fixation on the budget has now become a constraint,” Raychaudhury said.

“Innovation should be the identity of ISRO, not frugality.”