SPACE: WHERE ARE WE GOING? : STATE DEPARTMENT REMARKS ON U.S.-INDIA SPACE COOPERATION

Saturday, March 23, 2013

STATE DEPARTMENT REMARKS ON U.S.-INDIA SPACE COOPERATION

FROM: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
U.S.-India Space Cooperation
Remarks
Geoffrey Pyatt
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
U.S.-India Civil Space Joint Working Group
Washington, DC
March 21, 2013

Good morning everyone. It’s an enormous privilege to welcome Administrator Bolden, Ambassador Rao, the Indian delegation, and our colleagues from the Indian Embassy, NASA, NOAA, and the State Department here in Washington to this Joint Working Group.

The United States and India are leaders in earth observation. We’re excited to see how this working group can build on joint activities using U.S. and Indian earth observation satellites to better understand earth systems and provide information to improve economies and lives.

We also should seek to increase our commercial space cooperation and create opportunities for U.S. and Indian companies.

And our very capable space science communities have much to offer each other through collaboration. India’s first Indian Mars Orbiter Mission, slated for October 2013, is an exciting opportunity for U.S.-India collaboration.

Being here at this working group this morning is a particular pleasure for me, as I’ve been working for many years on helping make this sort of cooperation possible. Thanks to visionary, bipartisan U.S. and Indian leadership, we’ve recognized how much we have to offer each other and have made great strides in the past decade in bringing our scientific and technical communities together.

The hard work on both sides in transforming our interactions with each other has allowed successes such as including U.S. instruments on India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission -- a path-finding step to show our two systems how to work together, as well as a fruitful scientific endeavor pointing out the promise of this cooperation. More recently, the removal of ISRO subordinate entities from the Entity List at the 2011 Civil Space Joint Working Group meeting and additional measures taken since have further expanded the possibilities for trade and cooperation in civil space.

In January, President Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes satellite export reform measures expected to expedite trade in space technology.

U.S.-India science and technology builds on a relationship that is robust and vibrant. The U.S.-India Science and Technology Endowment Fund, established in 2009 and with an annual budget of $2 to $3 million, is a landmark in our belief to work together to promote commercialization of innovative technologies.

This collaboration on innovation across a wide range of disciplines is generating new jobs for our people and helping to address many of the globe’s big challenges.

Our space cooperation has become a signature aspect of this science, technology, and innovation cooperation, highlighting both the constancy of our mutual respect and appreciation for each others’ capabilities through the decades, as well as the vast potential – dare I say universal? -- opened up by the changes in our relationship.

I congratulate all of you – the experts and practitioners from both our countries – for your participation in building closer ties in space exploration, space science, earth observation, and launch and ensuring the safety and security of outer space activities. I know your efforts this week will further the cooperation that expands our collective knowledge, brings practical benefits to our citizens, and helps us plan for our future. I wish you all the best in this meeting of the Civil Space Joint Working Group.

No comments:

Post a Comment

STAR FLASH

What caused this outburst of V838 Mon? For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon's outer surface suddenly greatly expanded with the result that it became the brightest star in the entire Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002. Then, just as suddenly, it faded. A stellar flash like this had never been seen before -- supernovas and novas expel matter out into space. Although the V838 Mon flash appears to expel material into space, what is seen in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope is actually an outwardly moving light echo of the bright flash. In a light echo, light from the flash is reflected by successively more distant rings in the complex array of ambient interstellar dust that already surrounded the star. V838 Mon lies about 20,000 light years away toward the constellation of the unicorn (Monoceros), while the light echo above spans about six light years in diameter. Image Credit: NASA, ESA

THE SPIDERWEB GALAXY

Looking like a spider's web swirled into a spiral, Galaxy IC 342 presents its delicate pattern of dust in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Seen in infrared light, faint starlight gives way to the glowing bright patterns of dust found throughout the galaxy's disk. At a distance of about 10 million light-years, IC 342 is relatively close by galactic standards, however our vantage point places it directly behind the disk of our own Milky Way. The intervening dust makes it difficult to see in visible light, but infrared light penetrates this veil easily. IC 342 belongs to the same group as its even more obscured galactic neighbor, Maffei 2. IC 342 is nearly face-on to our view, giving a clear, top-down view of the structure of its disk. It has a low surface brightness compared to other spirals, indicating a lower density of stars (seen here as a blue haze). Its dust structures show up much more vividly (red). Blue dots are stars closer to us, in our own Milky Way. New stars are forming in the disk at a healthy rate. The very center glows especially brightly in the infrared, highlighting an enormous burst of star formation occurring in this tiny region. To either side of the center, a small bar of dust and gas is helping to fuel this central star formation. Data from Spitzer's infrared array camera are shown in blue (3.6 microns), green (4.5 microns) and red (5.8 and 8.0 microns). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

JUMPING TO WARP SPEED

This cockpit view of a hypothetical spacecraft traveling at eight-tenths the speed of light shows the visual distortions that would be experienced at such high speeds. The star field is actually being wrapped toward the front of the craft in addition to being significantly blue-shifted. NASA Glenn leads the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, NASA's primary effort to produce near-term, credible, and measurable progress toward the technology breakthroughs needed to revolutionize space travel and enable interstellar voyages. NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio.

OBSERVATION FROM THE SPACE STATION