China lauds ISRO on successful docking of satellites in space-OxBig News Network

China on Friday congratulated Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for the successful docking of its satellites in space.

“Congratulations to India #ISRO for successful docking of satellites under the SpaDeX mission!” Chinese spokesperson in India Yu Jing said.

The Indian space agency had successfully carried out the docking of two satellites in space on Thursday, making India the fourth country in the world to accomplish the feat. Before India, the United States of America, Russia and China had successfully docked their satellites in space.

This is not the first time that China has praised India. In September 2014 , India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also known as Mangalyaan, successfully entered the mars’ orbit. China immediately congratulated India for its successful mars mission, saying that it was not only a proud achievement for the country and Asia but also a “landmark progress” in the mankind’s exploration of outer space.

The MOM made India the first Asian nation to reach mars’ orbit and the first country worldwide to do so on its maiden attempt. China’s own maiden mission to Mars, Tianwen-1, which was launched in 2020, had successfully entered mars’ orbit in February 2021.

A decade prior to that Beijing had lost out on a mars orbit when its orbitir, ‘Yinghuo-1’, riding on the Russian spacecraft ‘Phobos’, failed midway. Both Russian and Chinese spacecraft burned up in the earth’s atmosphere.

Also after India’s moon landing in 2023, Chinese Communist Party mouth-piece ‘Global Times’ quoted experts, who congratulated India on the achievement.

The ‘Global Times’ had added that given that the two countries were both emerging economies and member states of the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, there was a vast room for cooperation between the two sides, both in the fields of deep-space exploration and manned missions such as data sharing, experience sharing and astronaut training.

On the military use of space, both India and China have carried out anti-satellite tests. This ability is to launch a missile which can bring down a satellite.