Picture for representative purpose
BENGALURU: A day after a drift between satellites caused Isro to postpone its
Space Docking Experiment
(
SpaDeX
) for the second time, the space agency has managed to put the spacecraft in a slow drift course.
“…The drift has been arrested and spacecrafts put in a slow drift course to move closer to each other. By tomorrow (Jan 10), it is expected to reach initialisation conditions,” Isro said Thursday.
The space agency, however, did not confirm if it will attempt the docking on Friday or on a later date.
Earlier in the day, Union minister Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for Space, met with senior Isro officials — including chairman S Somanath and chairman l-designate V Narayanan — to discuss the space agency’s ambitious upcoming missions for early 2025.
Isro has outlined an aggressive launch schedule for the first half of 2025, including two GSLV missions, a commercial LVM3 launch, and the crucial first uncrewed test of the Gaganyaan human spaceflight programme.
Leading the calendar is the GSLV-F15 mission, scheduled for late Jan. This mission will deploy the NVS-02 navigation satellite, enhancing India’s NavIC constellation. The satellite features indigenously developed atomic clocks and new L1 band signal capabilities, with launch vehicle integration currently in advanced stages at Sriharikota.
“A major highlight is the upcoming Isro-Nasa collaboration Nisar (Nasa-Isro Synthetic Aperture RADAR) mission, to be launched aboard GSLV-F16. This advanced microwave remote sensing satellite will provide comprehensive Earth observation data every 12 days, particularly valuable for monitoring agriculture, earthquakes, and landslides,” a government statement read.
March 2025 will see the commercial LVM3-M5 mission launching BlueBird Block-2 satellites for US firm AST SpaceMobile Inc., under an agreement with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL).
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