US to update its MTCR export control policies for India

The outgoing Biden administration is in the process of finalising a national security memorandum that will update Americas export control policies under the Missile Technology Control Regime MTCR a move that is likely to facilitate more cooperation between India and US companies in the space sector the White House said TuesdayThe goal of updating export control policies under the MTCR is to be able to advance commercial space cooperation even further with close partners like India Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer told reporters during a conference callWe are continuing to take steps to further knock down barriers to private sector cooperation and importantly we are in the process of finalising national security memorandum that will update our own export control policies under the Missile Technology Control Regime MTCR Finer saidFiner Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and Indian Ambassador to the US Vinay Kwatra visited Houston on Tuesday and met the astronauts of the Indian Space Research Organization ISRO who are training at NASAs Johnson Space Center to execute a joint effort of the International Space Station next yearCreated in 1987 by G7 countries MTCR is an informal political understanding among 35 member states that seeks to limit the proliferation of missiles and missile technology India joined MTCR in 2016 In practical terms this would mean that USbased companies would face lower barriers in partnering with Indian companies Finer saidIndia and the US he said are not only making significant advancements in their national space programmes but are also increasingly working together to build a cooperative partnership in space he said Our task as governments is to create a platform for industries to innovate faster together and at scale he saidThis goal was at the heart of the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies ICET that the Biden administration launched in January 2023 As part of our ICET initiative we committed to expand commercial space collaboration Finer saidChirag Parikh Deputy Assistant to the President and Executive Secretary National Space Council said the USIndia space cooperation has had a long history and is rooted in the civil space environment particularly on earth science and space science and explorationAs we continue to see how India has grown its space sector over just the past several years theyre hitting a number of groundbreaking milestones Notably recently they landed a probe on the Lunar South Pole region called Chandrayan3 and where weve also been with NASA been able to partner with them to be able to provide some payload for those elements he saidWhen Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden met in June 2023 and discussed collaboration around human space flight and joint space exploration which also included commercial partnershipsSo our partnership went from civil and scientific exploration to human to now commercial cooperation And as we learned here today in Houston the number of opportunities that us industry and industry Indian industry have to cooperate in space continues to grow he saidWe need to reduce the barriers to be able to enable that type of cooperation further Early next year we will have a highresolution synthetic aperture radar imagery satellite launched out of India jointly developed through both NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation to be able to map the entire Earth every 12 days to be able to combat the climate crisisOur cooperation will move into other areas potentially even in the world of national security space as we work together to be able to combat some of the types of threats that we see manifesting around the world So the opportunity space between India and the United States literally has no bounds no limits and can reach the edge of the universe Parikh saidA senior administration official told reporters that one of the goals is to include Indian astronauts in Americas most ambitious missions What weve heard from Indian interlocutors is their desire to explore potential uses of space in a variety of pursuits including with respect to some manufacturing in pharmaceuticals and other things that we are now actively exploring but also just in space exploration the official saidThe Indian astronauts that we shared lunch with today were extraordinarily excited about the opportunities to partner with American and other partners in space to explore the moon and beyond Our expectation is that India will be a full partner in everything that we seek to do increasingly in every element of space exploration the official saidA second senior administration official said As part of the Artemis programme is not just the human space exploration of it but its actually the contribution of technologies and capabilities India already has landed a lander on the moon and the science and data thats gained from that will help enable human spaceflight in the future said the officialSimilarly with the astronauts that weve met today at Johnson Space Center India has ambition to develop its own commercial or its own human spaceflight capabilities So the United States and India are partnering to be able to develop the training for them to have in India so that they can develop an Indian astronaut core as well the official saidThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever