India, US agree for future cooperation in Moon, Mars missions

India and the US have agreed to cooperate on future missions to the Moon and Mars after successful collaboration in Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission.

"Building on NASA's collaboration in India's highly successful Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission in 2008, NASA and ISRO agreed to explore further cooperative space exploration work, including future missions to the Moon and Mars.

"To this end the working group agreed to continue discussions in planetary science and Heliophysics to identify areas of potential cooperation," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) said in a joint statement.

"The value of bilateral cooperation was well reflected, for instance, through the inclusion of two NASA instruments on the successful Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission, which led to significant discoveries about lunar surface characteristics," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said at the fourth US-India Civil Space Joint Working Group meeting here.

According to the statement, existing cooperation, in the use of US and Indian earth observation satellite data, has produced information yielding a broad range of societal benefits including improved weather and monsoon forecasting, disaster management and response, improved agricultural and natural resource use and better understanding of climate change.