"NASA invites ISRO to join Moon Base programme amid strategic trade-offs"
Artemis Accords
US-led bilateral agreements establishing norms (transparency, interoperability, safety zones) for civil lunar and deep-space exploration, not a formal treaty.
Moon Base programme
NASA's plan to establish a permanent crewed research station on the Moon, the infrastructure phase following the Artemis human landing goal.
India's civil space partnership with the United States has evolved from episodic technical exchanges into a structured bilateral architecture over two decades. The foundational multilateral instrument remains the Outer Space Treaty (1967), which establishes that space exploration shall be conducted for the benefit of all countries and that no nation may claim sovereignty over celestial bodies. Both countries are signatories, and this treaty provides the normative baseline on which bilateral arrangements are layered.
The Artemis Accords, launched by NASA in 2020, represent the most consequential recent development in this architecture. These are bilateral agreements between NASA and partner nations — not a formal treaty requiring legislative ratification — grounded in the principles of the Outer Space Treaty and the Registration Convention, but operationalised for lunar and deep-space missions. They cover transparency, interoperability, peaceful purposes, open data sharing, and the designation of safety zones around operational sites. India formally joined in 2023 as the 27th signatory; the Accords now count approximately 70 member countries. India's Indian Space Policy of 2023 and the Space Sector Reforms of 2020 — which opened the sector to private participation and repositioned ISRO as a strategic and R&D anchor — made India a more credible partner for complex, multi-agency international missions.
NASA's Moon Base programme is the infrastructure phase of the broader Artemis initiative, which aims to land humans on the Moon before 2028 and subsequently establish a permanent research station where astronauts can live, work, and conduct experiments for extended periods. Humans last visited the Moon in 1972 (Apollo 17), and the Artemis programme represents the first sustained return effort. The Moon Base is conceived as a collaborative endeavour — NASA has explicitly sought partner countries and private companies to accelerate timelines and distribute costs.
For ISRO, the invitation is strategically significant on multiple dimensions. ISRO has its own target of a human Moon landing by 2040, and its Gaganyaan programme is building the crewed spaceflight capability required to eventually support such a mission. Participation in the Moon Base programme would provide hands-on experience in executing complex crewed missions and access to advanced technologies that would otherwise take years to develop indigenously. …
India, is one of the founding members of the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a multi-modal transport corridor. This corridor will connect
Consider the following statements regarding the Artemis Accords:
1.They are a formal multilateral treaty requiring legislative ratification by signatory nations.
2.China and Russia are not signatories to the Accords.
3.The Accords include provisions for designating 'safety zones' around operational lunar sites.
4.India joined the Artemis Accords as the 27th signatory.
Which of the statements given above are correct?
Which of the following best describes the '1979 Moon Agreement' in the context of lunar governance?
With reference to India's space programme, consider the following pairs:
Mission — Primary Achievement
1.Chandrayaan-3 — First soft landing near the lunar south pole
2.NISAR — Joint NASA-ISRO Earth-observation satellite using dual-band radar
3.Gaganyaan — India's first crewed mission to the Moon
Which of the pairs given above is/are correctly matched?
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