India and US strengthen space partnership, focus on human spaceflight and joint exploration

Officials from India and the United States have charted next steps in space collaboration, including human spaceflight, joint space exploration and a commitment to facilitating commercial partnerships between space companies to advance the shared interests in the growing space economy, the White House said on Wednesday, December 18.

A meeting in this regard was held in Houston on December 17. The participants in the meeting were US Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and Indian Ambassador to the United States Vinay Kwatra.

“Following President (Joe) Biden and Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi’s June 2023 commitment to work together to ‘reach new frontiers across all sectors of space cooperation’ and India’s signing of the Artemis Accords, our two nations reached an inflection point on collaboration across civil, security and commercial space sectors,” the White House said in a fact-sheet.

“This includes human spaceflight, joint space exploration and a commitment to facilitating commercial partnerships between US and Indian space companies to advance our shared interests in the growing space economy,” it said.

Over the course of the last few years our goal was to look sector by sector to see which areas we can take the #USIndia relationship to the next level. We’ve been able to do that in a variety of theaters to date, and space is certainly one of the most exciting. Thank you… pic.twitter.com/VFBKf9RsAx

— Deputy Secretary Kurt Campbell (@DeputySecState) December 18, 2024

As part of their visit to Houston, Finer and Campbell met with representatives from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and space industry leaders to identify new opportunities to further strengthen the two countries’ burgeoning space partnership.

They also reflected on the accomplishments of the past few months and charted next steps to take the India-US partnership to the next level, including selecting two ISRO astronauts to train at the NASA’s Johnson Space Centre for the first-ever joint effort between American and Indian astronauts at the International Space Station, with Axiom Space serving as the provider of the mission. The launch of the Axiom-4 mission as soon as spring 2025 will mark a significant milestone in the US-India space partnership and space exploration.

They agreed to exploring the creation of a new space innovation bridge to promote partnerships between US and Indian startups focused on advancing space situational awareness, satellite technology and space launch and exploration.

The two sides agreed to promote defence space cooperation through the US-India Advanced Domains Defence Dialogue, India’s participation in US Space Command’s annual Global Sentinel exercise and a recently-launched space situational awareness joint challenge under the India-US Defence Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS-X).

The officials agreed to advance reviews of missile technology exports to generate new opportunities for bilateral industry partnerships on space-launch technology, including for commercial satellite launches. They also celebrated the completion of a Strategic Framework for Human Spaceflight Cooperation to deepen interoperability in space and working toward the conclusion of a new arrangement on advanced astronaut training.

The officials also met with two ISRO astronauts who are training at the NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in preparation to join a proposed mission — the International Space Station — in 2025.

They also discussed plans to launch a jointly developed NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar Earth Science (NISAR) satellite in 2025. The officials met with representatives from the space industry private sector to explore innovative ways for the US and Indian commercial space sectors to strengthen collaboration, a key priority under the initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET), the State Department said in a separate media release.