India’s envoy, US officials discuss advancing space partnership

New York, Dec 19: India’s Ambassador Vinay Mohan Kwatra and US officials met at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Johnson Space Centre in Houston to take stock of space cooperation between the two countries and discuss advancing their partnership. While there on Wednesday, the teams from the two countries also met with Indian Astronauts Shubhanshu Shukla and Prashanth Nair, who are scheduled to fly on the Axios-4 mission to the International Space Station next year.

Ambassador Kwatra, who was accompanied by US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer, met with representatives from the NASA and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the State Department said. They also discussed plans to launch a jointly developed NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar Earth Science (NISAR) satellite next year, the Department said.

Representatives from the private sector space industry met with them to explore strengthening commercial space sector cooperation, it added. Kwatra said on X, “Had the opportunity to discuss India and US space cooperation including in human space flight programme and enhancing partnership between the two private sectors in the fields of innovation and technology.”

Indian Air Force’s Wing Commander Shukla will be the pilot for the mission operated by a private company, Axiom, in cooperation with NASA using rocket and spacecraft from Elon Musk’s SpaceX to fly to the ISS. Nair, who is also undergoing astronaut training, is on standby for the mission.

NISAR, which is scheduled for a March launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, “jointly built by ISRO and NASA, NISAR, aims to improve what we know and, potentially, help us prepare for and recover from natural and human caused disasters”, according to NASA. It will be a powerful tool to study earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides, as well as damage to infrastructure as it samples the Earth’s land and ice-covered surfaces twice every 12 days, it said.