Indian space programme breaks into 2025 on ‘mission mode’ Premium

2025 marks India's space programme in mission mode with PSLV-C60, Chandrayaan-4, and Bharatiya Antariksh Station developments.

Just as 2024 was the year India developed a vision for its space programme, 2025 is likely to have the programme in mission mode. The PSLV-C60 mission, underway as the year began, laid the foundations for Chandrayaan-4 and the Bharatiya Antariksh Station.

Forthcoming test flights will move India closer to human spaceflight, soon to receive a helping hand from a third launch pad approved for construction at Sriharikota, continuing work on the Next-Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV), and a change of guard at ISRO.

On December 30, 2024, the PSLV-C60 mission lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center (SDSC) in Sriharikota. About 15 minutes after liftoff, the rocket delivered the Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX) satellites at slightly different velocities into a 475-km circular orbit.

Then ISRO chairman S. Somanath said the nominal date for the docking attempt would be January 7, 2025. M. Sankaran, director of the UR Rao Satellite Centre (URSC), said this was to allow the satellites to power up with its solar cells.

Indian private company Kepler Aerospace provided ground station-as-a-service support for the mission alongside ISRO. It was able to simultaneously command the two SpaDeX satellites and provided “comprehensive mission support in under a month”.

Swiss space situational awareness company s2a systems also shared details of the distance between the two satellites on social media.

This separation reached far-rendezvous conditions, i.e. 10-20 km, on January 2, 2025, and started moving closer on January 6.  ISRO had originally planned a webcast for January 7, but pushed it by two days before calling it off altogether.