NASA has invited the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to join its Moon Base program, opening a new frontier in an already expanding India-US space partnership. The invitation came during the ninth India-US Civil Space Joint Working Group meeting in Bengaluru, as NASA looks to build international cooperation around its plans for a sustained human presence on the Moon.
The move comes against the backdrop of years of cooperation between NASA and ISRO. Their partnership includes NISAR, the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar mission, a joint Earth-observation satellite launched by ISRO in 2025 after more than a decade of technical collaboration between the two agencies.
ISRO has also emerged as one of the world’s leading space agencies, with a string of landmark achievements. In 2023, Chandrayaan-3 made India the first country to successfully land in the Moon’s southern polar region and deploy a rover there, demonstrating capabilities directly relevant to NASA’s growing focus on the lunar South Pole. India’s Mangalyaan, meanwhile, made history by reaching Mars orbit on its very first attempt in 2014, making ISRO only the fourth space agency to successfully place a spacecraft in Martian orbit at the time.
ISRO has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to deliver complex missions at remarkable scale. In February 2017, its PSLV-C37 rocket launched 104 satellites in a single mission, a world record at the time. These achievements have helped establish India as a credible and increasingly influential space power.
The invitation opens the door to discussions on how ISRO could contribute its lunar expertise, technology and scientific capabilities to NASA’s Moon Base effort — potentially taking the India-US space partnership from joint missions on Earth and in orbit to humanity’s next major frontier: a sustained presence on the Moon.
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