On Monday, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully carried out the second satellite docking as part of its SPADEX mission.

Confirming the development, Union Minister Jitendra Singh congratulated the ISRO team. In a post on X, he said, "Glad to inform that the second docking of satellites has been accomplished successfully." India’s space research program reached another important milestone with the launch of the PSLV-C60/SPADEX mission on December 30, 2024. The mission achieved its first successful docking on January 16, 2025, at 6:20 a.m. Later, the satellites were undocked on March 13 at 9:20 a.m.

In addition, ISRO has announced that more experimental procedures will be conducted throughout the next two weeks. He further wrote," As informed earlier, the PSLV-C60 / SPADEX mission was successfully launched on 30 December 2024. Thereafter, the satellites were successfully docked for the first time on 16 January 2025 at 06:20 AM and successfully undocked on 13 March 2025 at 09:20 AM. Further experiments are planned in the next two weeks." India’s space research program reached another important milestone with the launch of the PSLV-C60/SPADEX mission on December 30, 2024. The mission achieved its first successful docking on January 16, 2025, at 6:20 a.m. Later, the satellites were undocked on March 13 at 9:20 a.m.

On January 16 this year, ISRO successfully docked two SPADEX satellites (SDX-01 and SDX-02), marking a major milestone for India. With this achievement, India became the fourth country in the world—after China, Russia, and the United States—to develop space docking technology. ISRO explained that this important mission was designed to demonstrate India's ability to make two spacecraft meet, connect, and separate in space. This skill is essential for future space missions, like repairing satellites, running space stations, and exploring other planets.  The SpaDeX mission is a low-cost technology demonstration meant to test how two small spacecraft can dock with each other while in space. These spacecraft were launched using the PSLV rocket.

This docking technology is very important for India’s future space missions—like sending an Indian astronaut to the Moon, bringing back samples from the Moon, and building and running the Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS). In-space docking becomes necessary when more than one rocket launch is needed to complete a single mission. The SpaDeX spacecraft was developed by the UR Rao Satellite Centre (URSC), with help from other ISRO centres like Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), Space Applications Centre (SAC), ISRO Inertial Systems Unit (IISU), and Laboratory for Electro-Optics Space System (LEOS).