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The memorandum of understanding signed by Isro and Nasa opens a new chapter for India?s space programme.
The memorandum of understanding signed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) opens a new chapter for India’s space programme. The US played a key role in the early Sixties in establishing the sounding rocket programme that marked the beginning of India’s space effort. It later helped Isro in satellite broadcasting and remote sensing. And it was an American company that fabricated India’s first two Insat series. But following India’s nuclear test in 1974, and the success of its first launch vehicle, the SLV-3, in 1980 (which demonstrated the country’s technological capability to build ballistic missiles), Washington began to actively prevent access to any technology because of worries that it could be misused for military purposes.
Over the years non-proliferation became a powerful mantra in the US, and sanctions against India’s civil space and nuclear programme became tighter. It took the arrival of the Bush administration to turn things around. Imbued with the belief that the current non-proliferation regime discriminated against democratic India, a country whose proliferation record was impeccable, Mr Bush has pushed for a new regime. Though the capstone of this effort is the Indo-US nuclear agreement, the Indo-US dialogue has begun to provide openings for cooperation in a range of scientific and technical fields. While the current MoU is about having two hi-tech US payloads (along with five Indian, three developed by the European Space Agency, and one from the Bulgarian Space Laboratory) on board India’s proposed lunar mission, it points to the possibility of greater cooperation with an agency much larger and more experienced than India’s.
The spin-offs from the moon effort could help Isro overcome many engineering challenges such as building heavier launch vehicles, developing new capabilities in other areas of space exploration like a deep space tracking centre. The space agency could even try to develop a single-stage-to-orbit booster that would cut satellite launch costs remarkably. The resumption of ties with Nasa will undoubtedly be the key that will open other doors that have been locked for the Indian space programme till now. Across the world, space technology has become a cooperative endeavour. Given the opportunity, our space scientists should prove to be an asset not just for the country, but for the world.
