Is NASA’s Artemis deal really big and important for India?

Bilateral agreements will materialize in several ways during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to America. One of them is the agreement named Artemis Accord between the American space agency NASA and the Indian Space Research Institute, ISRO. The objective of this agreement will be to promote space cooperation between the two countries. With this, India will join America’s space allies. There is no doubt that India can greatly benefit from the Artemis deal. But it’s not that there are only advantages to this agreement. It must be thoroughly analyzed and it must be seen that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Who’s who in the Artemus group
The objective of the agreement will be to increase space cooperation between the two countries and to exchange space-related information between them. So far, 23 countries have joined US space agency NASA under the Artemis agreement, including Australia, Brazil, Bahrain, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania. , Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom.

What is the Artemis Accord
The Artemis deal is part of the US space agency NASA’s Artemis program, in which NASA’s primary goal is to reach humans on the Moon. In this, NASA works for the permanent presence of man on the Moon. Future missions to Mars were also included in this agreement. After joining Artemis, India and the United States will work together by sharing data, technologies and resources to ensure safe and sustainable exploration of the Moon.

Lunar missions will help
This agreement between the two countries can be a huge deal for India. This comes as India’s ISRO is about to launch its Chandrayaan 3 mission. The two countries are already cooperating with each other on lunar missions. But this cooperation was limited to the sharing of information. But now the two countries will also share resources and technology etc. for the moon.

At present, 23 countries are included in the group formed by the Artemis agreements between NASA and other countries. (Representative photo: Wikimedia Commons)

cooperation already exists
NASA and ISRO have also had mission-specific collaborations in the past. The two are already cooperating with each other on environmental and climate change issues such as natural hazards, snowmelt, groundwater supply, etc. Other than that, work on the NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) campaign is done as a partnership of the two.

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and it will be beneficial
America and India have agreed to send Indian astronauts to the International Space Station. It will take time now, but the benefits of cooperation on space travel are certainly to be found in the Gaganyaan campaign. Apart from that, four NASA astronauts will orbit the Moon next year and next year two passengers will stay on the Moon for a long time. India will certainly benefit from this.

At present, the benefits for ISRO are most visible in the Artemis agreement. (Representative photo: Wikimedia Commons)

A big question?
Countries like Russia and China are not included in the Artemis deal. But Russia is important for India, will this affect the bilateral space cooperation between India and Russia? This is a question to see because Russia has opposed the Artemis campaign from the beginning and so far Russia has huge cooperation in the Gaganyaan campaign.

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But what needs to be seen is that India will benefit more from America’s space cooperation than from Russia. On the other hand, when China is determined to overtake America in the space competition, NASA’s cooperation with India will prove very beneficial. At the same time, America has also taken a big leap forward in space competition by including India in its Artemis group. India’s presence on his side will serve to provide another force in his space competition.

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Keywords: India, ISRO, moon, Nasa, research, UNITED STATES