India remains constantly engaged with the United States to find a mutually beneficial and balanced trade arrangement as early as possible. India’s Ambassador to the US Vinay Mohan Kwatra said, on trade and tariffs, India will remain constantly engaged with the United States Trade Representative with the hope of finding a mutually beneficial and balanced trade arrangement as early as possible. The tone for the relationship was set during the Prime Minister’s US visit in early February this year for a bilateral meeting with US President Donald Trump. India agreed to a significant and substantial outcome document across a range of areas, and Space was one of them.

 

 

Kwatra termed India’s successful launch of a communication satellite yesterday as a very important and big day for the partnership between Washington and New Delhi, saying it caps a series of achievements in 2025 in bilateral space cooperation between the countries. Kwatra referred to the Axiom-4 Mission, which had carried Indian Air Force Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla to the International Space Station (ISS), marking India’s first human spaceflight mission to the ISS. He also noted the ISRO-NASA, NISAR mission for advanced Earth observation, now successfully realised, launched, and operationalised.

 

 

In the joint statement issued after the meeting in February when the PM visited the US, the two leaders had hailed 2025 as a pioneering year for US-India civil space cooperation, with plans for a NASA-ISRO effort through AXIOM to bring the first Indian astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS), and early launch of the joint ‘NISAR’ mission. The leaders had called for more collaboration in space exploration, including on long-duration human spaceflight missions, spaceflight safety and sharing of expertise and professional exchanges in emerging areas, including planetary protection.