India-US Space Partnership Shifts Toward Co-Creation at Bengaluru Space Expo

India's civil space relationship with the United States has evolved from episodic technical exchanges into a structured bilateral architecture. The foundational multilateral framework is the Outer Space Treaty (1967), which establishes that space exploration shall benefit all countries and that no nation may claim sovereignty over celestial bodies. Layered on top is the Artemis Accords, launched by NASA in 2020 as a set of bilateral agreements grounded in principles of 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 50 member countries. Neither China nor Russia is a signatory, giving the Accords an increasingly alliance-like character in the geopolitics of outer space.

India's domestic space policy has also shifted significantly. The Space Sector Reforms of 2020 opened the sector to private participation, repositioning ISRO as a strategic and R&D anchor rather than the sole operator. The Indian Space Policy of 2023 formalised this architecture, creating roles for IN-SPACe, the autonomous regulatory and promotional body facilitating private entities, and NSIL, the commercial arm. Private companies such as Agnikul Cosmos (which launched the world's first flight using a 3D-printed rocket engine) and Bellatrix Aerospace (working on propulsion and defence-space applications) have emerged from this ecosystem. These reforms made India a more credible partner for complex, multi-agency international missions. They also signalled to NASA that ISRO could engage not just as a government-to-government counterpart but as part of a broader industrial ecosystem capable of co-designing instruments and co-funding ventures.

India's space ambitions run on two parallel tracks. The autonomous track includes Gaganyaan (India's first crewed spaceflight programme), Chandrayaan-4 (a lunar sample-return mission), and the Bharat Antariksh Station (India's planned independent space station). The alliance-based track includes the NISAR joint Earth-observation satellite developed with NASA and the Moon Base invitation. The 2017 Mains question on obstacles to manned missions identified the core challenges: life-support systems, crew escape mechanisms, heavy-lift launch capability, and in-situ resource utilisation. These are precisely the domains where co-creation with NASA offers India the fastest path to capability, rather than developing each from scratch over decades.