India and the United States have agreed to strengthen their space collaboration, including human spaceflight, joint space exploration, and commercial partnerships between space companies. Officials from India and the US met with representatives from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and space industry leaders to identify new opportunities to strengthen the partnership.
They plan to select two ISRO astronauts to train at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre for the first-ever joint effort between American and Indian astronauts at the International Space Station. The launch of the Axiom-4 mission in spring 2025 will mark a significant milestone in the US-India space partnership and space exploration. They also agreed to explore the creation of a new space innovation bridge to promote partnerships between US and Indian start-ups focused on advancing space situational awareness, satellite technology, and space launch and exploration.
They also agreed to promote defense 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).
They also 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 discussed plans to launch a jointly developed NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar Earth Science (NISAR) satellite in 2025.
