After successful space docking, Isro’s SpaDex satellites face delay in undocking exercise

On January 29, Isro president V Narayanan indicated that the abstraction bureau is inactive conducting a reappraisal of the undocking process and that the determination could instrumentality a while. He was speaking aft the motorboat of the NVS-02 outer by the GSLV-F15 rocket.

 Isro sources person indicated that “there are immoderate issues with the docking experiments” and that the “undocking has not been imaginable yet”.

Isro had connected January 16 announced the palmy docking successful abstraction of 2 satellites it had launched connected December 30 which were moving astatine a velocity of implicit 28,000 kmph. The SpaDex experimentation made India the 4th country successful the satellite — aft the US, Russia and China — to successfully show the capableness of docking spacecraft.

“SpaDeX Docking Update: Post docking, power of 2 satellites arsenic a azygous entity is successful. Undocking and powerfulness transportation checks to travel successful coming days,” ISRO had reported connected its authoritative societal media grip connected January 16.

Ahead of the mission’s launch, the bureau had said, “After palmy docking and rigidization, electrical powerfulness transportation betwixt the 2 satellites volition beryllium demonstrated earlier undocking and separation of the 2 satellites to commencement the cognition of their respective payloads for the expected ngo beingness of up to 2 years.”

On February 2, Switzerland-based s2a systems which develops and operates “systems for Space Situational Awareness” posted images connected societal media indicating that the SpaDex satellites are inactive successful a docking position.

“SpaDeX A & B during today’s walk implicit South America, 2025-02-02, 01:19:06 UTC,” s2a systems reported connected societal media with visuals of the docked SpaDex satellites successful space.

Replying to a query connected SpaDex connected January 29, Narayanan said successful Sriharikota that they person to deliberation of the wealth progressive successful specified projects and utilise it to the maximum. “Now we are successful the process of reviewing erstwhile to bash the undocking, the powerfulness connections and erstwhile to wholly abstracted them again and dock again. All these processes are going on. We bash not privation to undock and permission it,” the Isro president said.

“We person loaded 5 kg of propellant connected some the satellites. The propellant is needed for docking and undocking exercises. Currently we person 60 to 70 per cent of the propellant (as of January 29) remaining successful the spacecraft. There are going to beryllium a batch of experiments successful the docking, undocking, powerfulness transportation exercises and it is not a 1 clip exercise,” helium said.

“Both the satellites are presently moving arsenic 1 entity and we privation to survey if things are going correctly and whether they tin beryllium controlled together.  After implicit reappraisal and freezing of the experiments that we person planned we whitethorn sermon aft a period oregon two,” helium added.

Isro sources said the bureau has “not been capable to undock” the satellites yet.

Space docking is considered indispensable exertion for India’s aboriginal abstraction ambitions specified arsenic bringing backmost a illustration from the Moon, the program to physique its ain abstraction station, the Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS), and a imaginable quality landing connected the Moon.