India unveils plans for 10 missions in 2025 after successful space-docking launch

Jan. 3 (UPI) -- India's space agency says it is planning a record 10 orbital missions, as well as its first commercial effort, during 2025 after successfully launching a space-docking project this week.

Indian Space Research Organization chairman S. Somanath told reporters following Monday's launch of a PSLV-C60 rocket carrying Space Docking Experiment, or SpaDeX, payloads, that the nation has big plans for the coming year.

"ISRO set to launch the NVS-02 satellite in January 2025, with more missions planned for upcoming year," he said on Tuesday while marking the agency's 99th launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh, which carried two small spacecraft built to dock together in space, a mission deemed as essential for India's space ambitions.

"Through this mission, India is marching towards becoming the fourth country in the world to have space docking technology," the agency said in a statement.

Among the upcoming plans outlined by Somanath are 10 missions, including the NVS-02 navigation satellite. With that "milestone" 100th launch from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, ISRO will launch the second in the series of 2nd-generation navigation satellites and the ninth satellite in its Navigation with Indian Constellation.

Similar to its predecessor NVS-01, the NVS-02 will likely have both navigation and ranging payloads which are meant to serve both civilian and military geo-positioning needs, NDTV reported.

Four other geosynchronous satellite launch vehicle missions are on the agenda for 2025, as well as a manned LVM-3 launch for India's Gaganyaan human spaceflight program, three Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle missions and a launch of the SSLV solid rocket, Somanath said.