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Asia Minute: India launches into a new year of celestial ambition

 Indian Space Research Organisation 
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The  Indian Space Research Organisation is the space agency of India.

The start of a new year offers an opportunity for new starts, projects and aspirations. For India, 2025 represents a year of new goals in space.

India has just launched a new round of celestial ambition. A pair of small spacecraft took off this week aboard an Indian-made rocket.

It's part of a docking experiment, the vehicles will be connected in space with one goal being the sharing of electricity. It is a bit like connecting a complex extension cord and seeing if the power is transmitted.

This is also a key step in a much more complicated mission of ultimately putting together a space station.
Space docking technology is an advanced field.

Only three countries, so far, have been able to pull it off. Those countries include, the United States, Russia and China.

India joined those three countries in another exclusive space group about a year and a half ago, when it became the fourth nation to land an unmanned mission on the moon.

India's current plans are to continue to work toward launching a crew of astronauts about a spacecraft sometime in 2026 and send a person to the moon by 2040.

As for the current mission, the key phase of the space docking operation is expected as soon as the middle of next week.

Bill Dorman has been the news director at Hawaiʻi Public Radio since 2011.
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