Just about a year ago, during an official state visit to India, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered an address to the Indian people. He declared that “the relationship between India and the United States can be one of the defining partnerships of this century”. He spoke about our commonalities “as societies that celebrate knowledge and innovation”, and how “together, we unlock new discoveries — from the particles of creation to outer space — two nations that have gone to both the Moon and to Mars.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Obama used the occasion of the state visit to issue a joint statement in which, among other things, they “agreed to further promote cooperative and commercial relations between India and the United States in the field of space”.
Today, the momentum that grew out of this official state visit — particularly in U.S.-India cooperation in space — is growing.
I’m deeply honoured this week to represent the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and all of the people of the U.S. here in India. In just a few months, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will also travel here to participate in the Asia-Pacific Remote Sensing Symposium.
Both of our visits come after a very productive U.S.-India Civil Space Joint Working Group meeting in Bengaluru last September. That meeting was themed around two very significant words; words that late Indian President Abdul Kalam was fond of saying after the completion of a successful activity: “What next?”
Regarding India-U.S. space cooperation, the answer to this question is to turn dreams into reality. The potential flowing from our partnerships extends all the way to Mars (and beyond).
The U.S. is leading a journey to Mars that will send astronauts to the Red Planet in the 2030s. Today, both our great nations are working together to lay the groundwork.
ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) and NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN spacecraft (MAVEN) have been together in Mars orbit since they arrived at the Red Planet within two days of one another in September 2014. Our high expectations, our dreams for these two spacecraft are being realised as they are both contributing to scientific understanding of Mars and its atmosphere. Our joint Mars Working Group has been very active. Our teams are meeting this week in Bengaluru for their third face-to-face meeting. The working group representatives are considering ways in which we can cooperate on MOM and MAVEN and other missions in the future.
Closer to home, NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) are collaborating on our first-ever joint earth science satellite mission. The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) will acquire critical, first-ever, all-weather, high-resolution radar measurements for use in a wide range of applications such as global food security, freshwater availability, human health, disaster prediction and hazard response, climate monitoring and adaptation, and urban management and planning. This is a significant mission to which both nations are making substantial contributions. Indeed, without the contributions of both India and the U.S., the highly capable NISAR mission would not be possible. Again, we’re turning dreams into reality.
Other cooperative activitiesThe list of other cooperative activities underway today is long. It includes exchange visits of U.S. and Indian researchers and even a joint airborne campaign that involves the flight of an advanced NASA visible/infrared imaging spectrometer instrument on an ISRO aircraft over sites in India. That mission, which began last December and runs through next month, is producing vast amounts of precise data.
These are excellent examples of how, in the past several years, NASA and ISRO have made major strides in developing U.S.-India space cooperation, by communicating often about our respective programmes, identifying mutual interests, and defining areas of potential collaboration.
We have recently taken this engagement to a whole new level. As true partners, we are implementing challenging mission activities and have seen steady engagement at the programme, project, and senior leadership levels.
U.S.-India civil space cooperation dates back to 1963 with the launch of NASA’s Nike-Apache sounding rocket from Indian soil. It’s our sincere hope that the future will bring new avenues of cooperation in earth and space science, deep space communications, and perhaps research aboard the International Space Station.
It’s very exciting that just days ago Prime Minister Modi announced that India will build a Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory facility, and together we will explore gravitational waves, the most exciting discovery in fundamental physics in this new millennium. Albert Einstein’s dreams are becoming reality. U.S. and Indian scientists are a part of that reality and are showing that together we can tackle difficult and important scientific questions.
As President Obama put it, “as Americans, we believe in the promise of India. We believe in the people of India. We are proud to be your friend. We are proud to be your partner as you build the country of your dreams.”
We are also proud to work with you to help make true the common dreams of humanity — including life here on spaceship Earth, the pursuit of a deeper understanding of our universe, and humanity’s place in it.
(Dava Newman isthe Deputy Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.)
