Docking technology key to future lunar, human space missions: Isro official

Docking technology will be crucial for future lunar exploration and human space missions, including bringing lunar samples back to Earth and assembling India's proposed space station, a senior ISRO official said here on Tuesday.

M R Raghavendra, Director of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), Bengaluru, was speaking at a National Space Day celebration organised by ISTRAC in collaboration with City Montessori School (CMS) in Lucknow.

The school is the alma mater of astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, the first Indian to visit the International Space Station.

"The docking experiment is a very interesting experiment which we have conducted, as it can be very useful in future," Raghavendra said, referring to ISRO's successful space docking experiment.

"Now we have landed on the Moon.

Now we want to bring some samples from the Moon, and to do that, we need this docking.

There will be an orbiter which goes around the Moon, and there will be a lander which picks up the sample,