NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation are set to cooperate on a joint mission to the International Space Station next yr, in keeping with the White House.
In a June 22, 2023, joint statement from the USA and India, NASA and ISRO are set to create a framework for human spaceflight cooperation by the top of the yr that will include the U.S. space agency training Indian astronauts at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The plan is to mount a joint effort to the ISS in 2024.
Whether this implies Indian astronauts would fly to the space station for a six-month expedition or through a short-duration private mission shouldn’t be yet known.
The statement also said India has signed the Artemis Accords, which is a non-binding agreement between the USA and other countries on the establishment of guiding principles and best practices for space exploration, particularly with the NASA-led Artemis program.
India is the twenty seventh signatory of the Artemis Accords, which incorporates a lot of the International Space Station partner nations with the notable exception of Russia.
The announcement got here during a visit to the White House by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which featured a joint press conference with President Joe Biden covering a mess of topics, including space cooperation.
“By taking the choice to hitch the Artemis Accords, we’ve taken a giant step forward in our space cooperation,” Modi said via a translator throughout the press conference. “For [Indian] and [American] partnership, even the sky shouldn’t be the limit.”
Moreover, the White House statement celebrated the delivery of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite, or NISAR, to India for launch sometime next yr.
NISAR is a $1.5 billion joint Earth-observation mission to measure the planet’s “changing ecosystems, dynamic surfaces, and ice masses providing details about biomass, natural hazards, sea level rise, and groundwater,” amongst other applications, in keeping with NASA.
“We look ahead to all that we’ll accomplish here on Earth and in space, including our joint Earth science mission NISAR, and are especially grateful for India’s signing of the Artemis Accords,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a tweet. “We are able to do more after we work together!”
The White House statement said the 2 countries are taking a look at other ways to reinforce business collaboration, including addressing export controls and facilitating technology transfer.
India has been working on developing its own independent access to space via the Gaganyaan spacecraft. This three-person vehicle has been in development since 2007. Due to funding and technical delays, its first crewed flight isn’t expected until not less than 2025.
The country has had a series of deep space exploration successes during the last decade, including a Mars orbiter and several other lunar orbiters. ISRO also attempted to soft land a spacecraft on the Moon in 2019, nonetheless a software issue caused it to crash. India is planning to send one other lander to the Moon later this yr.
This comes as China becomes more vocal about putting a human on the Moon, something it goals to do before 2030. The country can also be planning to construct an International Lunar Research Station on the south pole that will support Chinese astronauts and people of its partners, which currently includes Russia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.
The NASA-led Artemis program anticipates landing astronauts on the Moon as early as 2026. Nevertheless, that timeline is more likely to slip as technical delays occur along with constricting budgets over the subsequent couple years.