Indian Ambassador to the United States Vinay Mohan Kwatra; US deputy secretary Kurt Campbell, along with US Principal deputy national security advisor Jon Finer, travelled to Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, on Tuesday to take stock of the significant progress made in US-India space cooperation in recent months and discuss next steps to further advance bilateral space partnership, according to a White House press release.
The officials met with representatives from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) and Indian Space Research Organization (Isro), including two Isro astronauts who are training at Nasa Johnson Space Center in preparation to join a proposed mission to the International Space Station in 2025. They also discussed plans to launch a jointly developed Nasa-Isro Synthetic Aperture Radar Earth Science (NISAR) satellite in 2025. The officials met with representatives from the space industry private sector to explore innovative ways for the US and Indian commercial space sectors to strengthen.
On a press call after the visit, senior US administration officials, including Campbell and Finer, spoke on the US-India space collaboration, which is an important part of the US-India strategic partnership. They were also joined by Indian American Chirag Parikh, executive secretary of the US National space council.
“You know, the US-India space cooperation has had a long history, often rooted in the civil space environment, particularly on Earth science and space science and exploration. And as we continue to see how India has grown its space sector over just the past several years, they’re hitting a number of groundbreaking milestones,” Parikh, who was appointed by US President Joe Biden as the executive secretary of the National Space Council in August 2021, said. One of the many Indian Americans holding a senior position in the Biden administration, Parikh is responsible for the day-to-day activities of the council, which is chaired by vice president Kamala Harris. He has also been responsible for overseeing the implementation of United States space policies and strategies and working across the US government as well as with industry, international, and academia partners to meet objectives through the space sector.
“Notably, recently, they [India] landed a probe on the lunar South Pole region called Chandrayaan-1 — or Chandrayaan-3. And where – we’ve also, with Nasa, been able to partner with them to be able to provide some payload for those elements,” he said.
“But when Prime Minister Modi and President Biden met in June of 2023, they had a commitment to reach new frontiers across all sectors of space cooperation. And one of those areas that they discussed was promoting collaboration around human space flight and joint space exploration, and also including the commercial partnerships,” Parikh, who joined the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in 2016, serving positions such as deputy director for counterproliferation, added. He had also served as director of space policy in the National Security Council.
“So, our partnership went from civil and scientific exploration to human to now commercial cooperation. And as we learned here today in Houston, the number of opportunities that US industry and Indian industry have to cooperate in space continues to grow,” he added.
Parikh left the NGA in early 2020 to join Microsoft, where he was senior director of Azure Space, the company’s effort to extend its cloud computing platform to space applications. He had also served as the deputy national intelligence officer for science and technology and as an aerospace engineer at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center. He holds a BS in aerospace engineering from the University of Cincinnati.
“Further, early next year, we will have a high-resolution synthetic aperture radar imagery satellite launched out of India, jointly developed through both Nasa and the Indian Space Research Organization, to be able to map the entire Earth every 12 days to be able to combat the climate crisis,” Parikh said.
“And finally, our cooperation will move into other areas, potentially even in the world of the national security space, as we work together to be able to combat some of the types of threats that we see manifesting around the world. So, the opportunity space between India and the United States literally has no bounds, no limits, and can reach the edge of the universe.”
