Artemis Accords — India, a growing space power, is forging closer ties with NASA Details of a potential US-Indian partnership in human spaceflight remain murky.

Stephen Clark – Jul 6, 2023 12:23 am UTC Enlarge / Taranjit Sandhu, India’s ambassador to the United States, signs the Artemis Accords in Washington on June 21. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson looks on from across the table.NASA/Bill Ingalls reader comments 24 with

When Indias ambassador to the US signed up his country to the Artemis Accords last month, it signaled the worlds most populous countrywith a growing prowess in spaceflightcould be turning toward the United States as a partner in space exploration.

India became the 27th country to sign the Artemis Accords, a non-binding set of principles among like-minded nations guiding a vision for peaceful and transparent exploration of space. The accords cover the international registration of human-made space objects, the open release of scientific data, and an agreement for nations not to claim territory on the Moon or other planetary bodies, among other tenets.

The Artemis Accords started under the Trump administration, an effort spearheaded by former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and Mike Gold, an attorney and longtime space industry official. Bill Nelson, the NASA chief under President Biden, has embraced the accords. He said the principles are just common sense.

You come to somebodys aid in distress You try to have commonality of parts, you respect each others territory, Nelson said.

Details about future cooperation between the US and India remain scarce. Nelson plans to travel to India later this year for meetings and discussions with Indian space officials. One objective of Nelsons trip will be to hammer out broad objectives for a strategic framework for human spaceflight cooperation.

Despite the name of the Artemis Accords, theres no guarantee that India will play a significant role in NASAs Artemis program to return astronauts to the Moon and eventually send humans to Mars.

Theres no implication of a signatory to the Artemis accords also being part of the Artemis program, Nelson told Ars.

But none of the other 26 signatories to the Artemis Accordsa list that includes European space powers and Japanhas their own human spaceflight program. India is developing a human-rated spacecraft called Gaganyaan that could be ready to fly people into low-Earth orbit in 2025, several years later than originally planned. Advertisement Enlarge / Visitors look at an actual scale model of India’s Gaganyaan Orbital Module, a human-rated spacecraft now in development, at the Human Space Flight Expo in 2022.MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP via Getty Images

The fact that they are a nation that intends in the future to fly own their own astronauts, is that significant? The answer is yes, Nelson said. I think its of significance that a major country thats not considered aligned with the US (is) a signatory.

Ive described India as a sleeping giant and one that is quickly awakening,” Gold told Ars. “India is absolutely vital to global space development, and Artemis in particular, since the country is active with lunar programs, Martian programs, and now even human spaceflight.

Through the Artemis program, NASA hopes to land astronauts on the lunar surface later this decade for the first time since 1972. NASA officially targets the end of 2025 for the first Artemis crew landing on the Moon, but the schedule is almost certain to slip as new spacesuits from Axiom Space and a new human-rated lunar lander from SpaceX proceed through development and testing. What’s next?

Where India might fit into the Artemis program is still to be determined. But India has launched as many space missions this year as Japan and Europe combined, with another milestone launch scheduled later this month with a robotic spacecraft that will mark India’s second attempt to achieve a controlled landing on the Moon, following a landing failure in 2019.

India successfully sent a spacecraft to Mars a decade ago, and international satellite operators regularly rely on Indian rockets to put their missions into orbit.

“They come to Artemis with activities that are already directly relevant to the program,” Gold said of India. “Neither the United States nor India needs to alter their trajectories at all. Their activities are already highly complementary.”

Before the Artemis Accords signing, the Indian Space Research OrganizationsIndia’s space agencyand NASA were already working together on a sophisticated radar Earth observation satellite called NISAR scheduled for launch in 2024. An Indian satellite launched on the space shuttle in the 1980s.

But ISRO and NASA have not worked together in any significant way in the realm of human spaceflight or space exploration. Page: 1 2 Next → reader comments 24 with Stephen Clark Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the worlds space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet. Advertisement Channel Ars Technica ← Previous story Related Stories Today on Ars