State Department invites India to partner in NASA’s Artemis program
India’s Bharatiya Antariksh Station as outlined in 2024.
Click for original image.
According to several stories in the Indian press today, the U.S. State Department yesterday invited India to partner in NASA’s Artemis program.
NASA has formally invited India to join its Moon Base programme, which aims to establish a sustained human presence near the lunar South Pole. The invitation was extended during the ninth meeting of the India-US Civil Space Joint Working Group, which concluded recently in New Delhi.
The US Embassy on Wednesday shared a press release on the meeting, which was attended by US Ambassador to India H E Sergio Gor and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman V Narayanan. The meeting discussed existing and future avenues of collaboration between India and the US in the space sector.
India is already a signatory to the Artemis Accords. This new offer I am sure was issued with NASA’s full cooperation. Coming however from the State Department it indicates a global political aspect beyond building a Moon base with international partners. The offer is probably aimed at driving a wedge between India’s increasing space partnership with Russia. In 2025 India agreed to build its Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS) in the same inclination as Russia’s proposed station, and work together on cross astronaut visits. This partnership offer is an attempt to pull India away from Russia and toward the U.S.
It carries weight because the U.S. lunar program is real, with solid financing and a healthy space industry. Russia meanwhile is strapped for cash with a space industry that is decaying. It remains extremely doubtful its Russian Orbital Station (ROS) will become operational by 2030, as outlined by Roscosmos in April 2026.
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By all means welcome the Indians. Just make it clear that driving on any lunar roads will be done on the right-hand side.
Amen…no roundabouts either
In terms of station modules. ISS is due for retirement, I would like to see it saved.
Momentum exchange tethers can allow for a slow pull at one end with something fast at the other.
SLS can move high and fast, Starship low and slow.
Any way to attach ISS to the other two via a flying windlass?
Sacrifice two to save one
Quite apart from any other considerations like (cough, cough) cost, there will be no spare SLSes available for such a chore during the interval between now and the ISS’s scheduled de-orbiting. A “saved,” but unmanned, ISS that remained in Earth orbit would simply be a long-term menace to navigation and a long-playing source of additional space debris as it was slowly knacked to bits by other debris objects and micrometeorites that would inevitably intersect it. So not really “saved” at all. The only really safe place for this increasingly creaky antique is Davy Jones’s Locker.