New Delhi, Washington ‘constantly engaged’ to reach mutually beneficial trade deal: India’s envoy to US

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited the US in February this year for a bilateral meeting with US President Donald Trump, their first meeting within weeks of Trump’s inauguration for a second term in the White House.In the joint statement issued after the meeting, the two leaders had hailed 2025 as a “pioneering year” for US-India civil space cooperation, with plans for a NASA-ISRO effort through AXIOM to bring the first Indian astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS), and early launch of the joint ‘NISAR’ mission, the first of its kind to systematically map changes to the Earth’s surface using dual radars.The leaders had called for more collaboration in space exploration, including on long duration human spaceflight missions, spaceflight safety and sharing of expertise and professional exchanges in emerging areas, including planetary protection.The leaders also committed to further commercial space collaboration through industry engagements in conventional and emerging areas, such as connectivity, advanced spaceflight, satellite and space launch systems, space sustainability, space tourism and advanced space manufacturing.Kwatra referred to the Axiom-4 Mission, which had carried Indian Air Force Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla to the International Space Station, marking India’s first human spaceflight mission to the ISS.He also noted the ISRO-NASA ‘NISAR’ mission for advanced Earth observation, now successfully realised, launched, and operationalised.”And if you look at the areas which we have plotted in the field of space, you can easily see 10 months down the line, they have mostly, if not all of them, achieved really. We continue to work very, very proactively in other areas also including in the fields of trade, science and technology, artificial intelligence,” Kwatra said.”We have been working with a range of stakeholders in the US, both in the private sector, the government sector, in the think tank circle for a very substantial participation of theirs in the upcoming AI Action Summit in February,” he said.India will host the AI Impact Summit on February 19-20 in New Delhi, the first time an AI summit will be hosted in the Global South, after similar Global AI Summits in Bletchley Park (UK), Seoul and Paris.Kwatra added that “technology has been a very principal domain of our engagement.”



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