India - United States: New Frontiers in Space

In the early 1960's, the United States had offered substantial assistance to India in setting up an Equatorial Rocket Launching Station at Thumba (TERLS), Subsequently, India dedicated this facility to the United Nations in 1968. Since then, scientist from various countries have launched more than 3000 sounding rockets for research purposes. 

During 1975-76, under a collaborative bilateral agreement, an experiment, Satellite Instrumental Television Experiment (SITE) was conducted. Under this agreement, a U.S. satellite, ATS-6, beamed educational programs to direct reception television sets to 2400 far flung villages exposing them to a new and immensely powerful medium of television. 

Anuradha, an Indian experiment for cosmic ray studies was part of NASA’s third Spacelab mission. 

The Indian Institute of Geomagnetism (IIG) and Survey of India have made use of data received from NASA’s MAGSAT Satellite for research and analysis. 

India has also participated in Guest Investigator Program of NASA’s Einstein and HEAO-B X-ray astronomy satellites. 

The United States supplied samples of lunar material collected by its lunar probes to India for research purposes. 

Under a Memorandum of Understanding between India and U.S. signed in 1977, India received data from LANDSAT satellites. 

Under a commercial arrangement, Space Imaging of Denver, CO markets the Indian Remote Sensing satellite imageries of panchromatic resolution of 5m - which until recently has been the best available in the public domain. 

In 1997, NASA & NOAA of United States and Indian Space Research Organization & the Department of Science and Technology of India have agreed to share meteorological data from India’s INSAT satellites. Under this agreement, collaborative research in the area of earth & atmosphere sciences is being undertaken. 

Search and rescue operations using distress signals monitored by orbiting satellites save lives in many countries. India is perusing COSPAS-SARSAT for the use of the system and operation of the Local User Terminal (LUT) and the Mission Control Centre (MCC) at Bangalore and the LUT at Lucknow as part of the international COSPAS-SARSAT network. The MOU in this regard is being finalized. 

Another MOU has been signed among ISRO, the German Aerospace Centre (DRL) and NASA for the reception of data from DLR’s Modular Optoelectronic Scanner instrument on ISRO’s IRS-P3 satellite, at NASA’s ground station for carrying out ocean related studies.