NASA administrator visits ISRO headquarters, inspects NISAR

Bengaluru: NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Thursday met the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman and Department of Space (DoS) Secretary S Somanath at the ISRO headquarters here.

At a meeting organised at Antariksh Bhavan, Nelson and Somanath, along with the first Indian cosmonaut Wg Cdr Rakesh Sharma (Retd.), interacted with the ISRO/DoS community.

Somanath noted the long-standing collaboration between the two space agencies – from the launch of the first sounding rocket from India to the discovery of hydroxyl molecules on the Moon by the payloads on board Chandrayaan-1 to the upcoming low earth orbit observatory NISAR (NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar).

Nelson congratulated ISRO on Chandrayaan-3 which made India the first nation to reach the south pole of the Moon. He said NASA is looking forward to receiving the data from NISAR. ISRO said “potential opportunities for continued cooperation” beyond NISAR, in programmes like India’s human spaceflight mission Gaganyaan and enhanced interactions among scientific, academic and industrial communities were discussed.

Senior members from ISRO, DoS, NASA and the US Consulate, Chennai, participated in the meeting.

Earlier in the day, the NASA administrator and the ISRO Chairman visited the U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) and had a look at the NISAR satellite which is undergoing its final integration and testing activities, with the participation of engineers from ISRO and NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Nelson also interacted with the NASA/JPL engineers who are working at URSC on the satellite.