Russia eyes more joint space projects with India

Russia and India share a long history of cooperation in space. India’s first satellite was orbited by a Soviet Kosmos-3 rocket from the Kapustin Yar site on April 19, 1975. The first Indian to travel to space, Rakesh Sharma, flew with the Soviet Soyuz T-11 expedition in 1984. In the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, Russia supplied 12 KRB cryogenic third stages for the Indian GSLV rockets. The two countries continue to be strategic partners in space exploration, as confirmed by Russian President Vladimir Putinʼs recent visit to India.

In the course of the one-day visit on December 24, 2012, Putin held talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and signed $5 billion’s worth of pacts in a variety of fields. Although defense contracts account for the major part of this sum, the newly signed space-related agreements are of no less significance.

The most important of these is certainly the agreement to jointly operate the Russian Glonass satellite navigation system. Among other things, the deal secures India’s independence from the US GPS system by enabling it to operate Glonass for civilian and military purposes. An earlier accord, signed in late 2011, granted the Indian military access to high-precision Glonass signals for the purpose of dramatically increasing the accuracy of its ballistic missiles (to within half a meter of the target, according to some sources).