Partnering Up: ISRO Joins Forces with Boeing, Blue Origin, and Voyager!
India’s space agency, ISRO, is currently investigating potential partnerships with Boeing Co., Blue Origin LLC (owned by Jeff Bezos), and Voyager Space Holdings Inc. This development comes as the head of NASA pays an official visit, underscoring the increasing level of cooperation between the United States and India in the realm of outer space.
Potential partnerships could also involve Indian commercial entities, India’s space ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson is visiting several locations in India this week, including facilities in Bengaluru that test and integrate spacecraft into a joint US-India Earth observation mission scheduled to launch in 2024.
Nelson’s visit underscores NASA’s deepening space alliance with the Indian Space Research Organization, which this year achieved several milestones, including landing a spacecraft on the moon’s south pole in August.
Both the space agencies are planning to send an Indian astronaut to the International Space Station next year. In June, Nelson joined a ceremony in Washington when India signed the Artemis Accords, a US-backed initiative with more than two dozen other countries to strengthen the principles of space exploration.
Blue Origin is “very interested” in considering using an Indian rocket as a crew capsule to service its proposed space station Orbital Reef in low Earth orbit, ISRO chairman S. Somanath told The Times of India in June. Indian engineering equipment manufacturer Larsen & Toubro Ltd. is in early talks with Blue Origin to supply in-orbit launch capabilities, according to local media.
Denver-based Voyager announced in July that it had entered into an agreement with ISRO’s commercial arm, NewSpace India Ltd, to study the use of Indian rockets to launch and deploy small satellites.
Voyager also signed a memorandum of understanding with ISRO and India’s National Space Agency in July to use Gaganyaan, the space agency’s under-development spacecraft, to service the proposed Starlab space station.
Boeing is considering designing and manufacturing a space capsule simulator for India’s human spaceflight project, but has yet to sign a contract, according to local media.
India’s future projects include the first launch of astronauts for a crewed mission, scheduled for 2025.
To bolster its lunar ambitions, the country plans to develop a next-generation launch vehicle and a new launch pad, with the goal of landing humans on the moon by 2040.
ISRO’s to-do list also includes setting up a space station by 2035, launching a Venus orbiter and landing on Mars.
