NASA to Help ISRO Send Indian to Space in 2024, Launch Costliest Satellite, Plan Interplanetary Probe

NASA administrator Bill Nelson on Tuesday said the American space agency will help train and send an Indian astronaut to the International Space Station by the end of the next year. This would be the first time in four decades that an Indian will travel to space after Rakesh Sharma’s 1984 travel to space aboard the Soviet-made Soyuz T-11 spacecraft.

“The selection of the astronaut will be done by ISRO, NASA won’t be a part of it. Details of the mission are being worked out by ISRO,” Nelson was quoted as saying by The Times of India.

“India is a great partner for the US and also a great future partner for the activities of astronauts in space. The US will launch several private landers on the south pole of the Moon next year. But the fact that India was the first to land there deserves congratulation,” Nelson, who is on a tour of India and is expected to visit multiple cities to strengthen India-US space cooperation, said, according to the newspaper.

Nelson also met Union space minister Jitendra Singh and congratulated him for the landing of the lunar rover, Chandrayaan-3, on the lunar south pole. The former US senator from Florida said that NASA is ready to collaborate with India, if India desires to build the country’s first space station. “I think India wants to have a commercial space station by 2040. If India wants to collaborate with us, of course, we will be available. But that’s up to India,” Nelson told The Times of India.

He also said that NASA is ready to collaborate with ISRO and plan an interplanetary mission with India but said it all depends on ISRO.

NASA and ISRO will also jointly launch the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) in the first quarter of next year. The satellite that costs over $1 billion is one of the world’s costliest satellites and will observe the surface of the Earth and its climate. It will measure any change in its surface — land or water — or any movement in ice mass and give a three-dimensional model, conveying important information about the future of planet Earth.

Nelson said NASA is also identifying opportunities in private astronaut missions for Indian astronauts and will meet space sector leaders in Mumbai.

Nelson also recalled seeing India for the first time from space. The senator flew to space aboard the Columbia spacecraft shuttle almost four decades ago. “The first time I saw India was from space, the entire country in one go in January 1986. I saw Sri Lanka first and as I moved my eyes upward, I could see the entire India. Then I saw the Himalayas at the top of the country that looked like heaven,” Nelson told The Times of India.