India and the United States have agreed to let Indian rockets launch satellites with U.S. components. The deal was reached at a meeting between Indian Foreign Secretary Shayam Saran and U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns during their meeting last week, the Indian Express newspaper said Tuesday.
“The move is expected to boost India’s commercial rocket launch program,” said the Indian Space Research Organization.
ISRO said it was on the verge of finalizing an agreement with NASA to launch U.S. instruments on future Indian space missions.
“The agreement would initially see a U.S. moon mineralogy mapper and a synthetic aperture radar on the Chandrayan 1 moon probe, the 525-kilogram Indian spacecraft scheduled for launch in 2007 or 2008,” said the news report.
According to an ISRO official, the Indo-U.S. joint working group on civil space cooperation is expected to meet in Washington this year to finalize agreements on joint satellite activities.
“All India-U.S. space cooperation activities are happening within the framework of the agreement signed by the Prime Minister during his visit to the U.S.,” said ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair.
