NASA has invited India—already part of the Artemis Accords—to explore collaboration on the space agency’s moon base, as well as other areas of mutual interest to both countries’ space efforts. The announcement came at the ninth meeting of the India-U.S. Civil Space Joint Working Group on August 5th and 6th at ISRO headquarters in Bengaluru.

Interestingly, at the time of this writing, ISRO has yet to accept the invitation, but many view that as a formality. Both nations have been increasing cooperation with each other, as evidenced by joint projects that have reached fruition in the past year or two.

Space Cooperation Agreements

Talks centered on civil and commercial space work under the Transforming the Relationship Utilizing Strategic Technology initiative, or TRUST. That framework traces back to the joint statement Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump released in February 2025. Negotiators agreed to keep working toward an arrangement on open scientific data sharing under the same accords.

V. Narayanan, ISRO chairman and secretary of India’s Department of Space, opened the session alongside Sergio Gor, the U.S. ambassador to India. Both used their remarks to press the case for deeper space ties between the two countries. M. Sankaran, director of ISRO’s U R Rao Satellite Centre, co-chaired for the Indian delegation. Wesley Brooks, assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs, and Kathleen Karika, NASA associate administrator for international and interagency relations, led the American side.

Already Working Together

Delegates looked at where to take the partnership next following last year’s launch of NISAR, the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite. Future science missions and human spaceflight technology were both on the table. The two sides also restated their support for the United Nations guidelines on long-term sustainability of outer space activities and took stock of multilateral efforts to keep the U.N. space committee effective.

Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla became the first Indian to board the International Space Station in June 2025, arriving aboard Axiom Mission 4 on June 26 and splashing down off the California coast after the flight wrapped.

He was India’s second citizen in space, following Rakesh Sharma’s 1984 Soyuz flight. ISRO spent 550 crore rupees on the seat and treated the two-week stay as a proving ground for Gaganyaan, the country’s own crewed program. Shukla is one of four Indian Air Force pilots assigned to that effort, along with Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, Ajit Krishnan and Angad Pratap. Gaganyaan is expected to fly its first crewed mission in 2027.

Other areas of interagency cooperation: Chandrayaan-3, where the Vikram lander carried a passive NASA laser retroreflector array for lunar ranging. The two countries also discussed working together on Lunar Gateway in June 2024, before the Trump administration canceled the project.