India became the world's fourth nation on Thursday to achieve the feat of space docking, a technological milestone that underscores its ambitions to expand its share of a rapidly growing $400-billion global space market.

India on Thursday became the fourth country to successfully achieve an unmanned docking in space, a feat seen as pivotal for future missions as New Delhi cements its place as a global space power.

Two small satellites successfully ‘docked’ – latching onto each other while in orbit – following a series of complex manouevres

India successfully docked its two SpaDex satellites in Earth orbit yesterday (Jan. 15), becoming just the fourth country to pull off such a satellite meetup.

BENGALURU: Isro, which began working on the Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX) project on mission mode in 2017, much before the announcement of Gaganyaan, chose the mission's parameters carefully to complement future human spaceflight missions while avoiding populated areas during potential abort scenarios.