US set to revise MTCR export policies to boost space cooperation with India

The outgoing Biden administration is in the process of finalising a national security memorandum that will update America's 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 Tuesday.

The 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 call here.

We 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 said.

 

Finer, 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 NASA's Johnson Space Center to execute a joint effort of the International Space Station next year.

Created in 1987 by G-7 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 US-based companies would face lower barriers in partnering with Indian companies, Finer said.

India 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 said.

This 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 said.

Chirag Parikh, Deputy Assistant to the President and Executive Secretary, National Space Council, said the US-India space cooperation has had a long history and is rooted in the civil space environment, particularly on earth science and space science and exploration.

As we continue to see how India has grown its space sector over just the past several years, they're hitting a number of groundbreaking milestones. Notably, recently, they landed a probe on the Lunar South Pole region called Chandrayan-3, and where we've also been with NASA, been able to partner with them to be able to provide some payload for those elements, he said.

When 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 partnerships.

So, 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 said.

"We need to reduce the barriers to be able to enable that type of cooperation further. Early next year, we will have a high-resolution 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 crisis,  Our 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 said.

A senior administration official told reporters that one of the goals is to include Indian astronauts in America's most ambitious missions.

What we've 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 said.

The 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 said.

A second senior administration official said, "As part of the Artemis programme is not just the human space exploration of it, but it's actually the contribution of technologies and capabilities. India already has landed a lander on the moon, and the science and data that's gained from that will help enable human spaceflight in the future, said the official.

Similarly, with the astronauts that we've 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 said.