New Delhi: India is partnering with multiple countries to make its program of human space mission ‘Gaganyaan’ successful. First, it was France, which it partnered, and now it is hoping to ink a pact with Russia for sharing of expertise with Indian space agency ISRO. The talks regarding this opportunity may come up during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to New Delhi next month, official sources said.

Apart from the mission ‘Gaganyaan’, both the sides are currently holding talks to establish ground stations for Glonass, which is a global positioning system of Russia, and NaVIC, an Indian development in the field of GPS technology, the sources said.

The topic of sharing expertise on mission ‘Gaganyaan’ was discussed during External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s visit to Moscow this month, a source said.

The anticipation develops in the at a significant stage, when India and France have already signed a memorandum of understanding earlier this month to share French expertise on the first human mission by India and was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech this year.

The human mission programme will comprise of a three-member crew from India to be sent to space by 2022.

Rakesh Sharma was the only Indian to have visited the outer space in 1984 along with other astronauts from the erstwhile Soviet Union with its own spacecraft. He still remains the first and only to have visited there.

The Indian Space Research Organisation and ROSCOSMOS, the Russian space agency had signed a MoU between India and Russia in May 2015 in which the agencies agreed to work on joint activities in areas of mutual interest which include launch vehicle development, satellite navigation, critical technologies for human spaceflight programme.

There is a total of three countries which share cooperation in all three strategic sectors of defence, nuclear and space with India and they are Russia, France, and the US.

But the collaboration of India with Russia in the field of space dates back to four decades. In the year 2015, both the sides celebrated the 40^th anniversary of the India’s first satellite ‘Aryabhatt’ launch by using the launch vehicle ‘Soyuz’ of the USSR(Now Russia).

Back in 2007, both India and Russia inked a framework agreement over the cooperation of peaceful uses of outer space which included Glonass navigation system, satellite launches, remote sensing and other societal applications of outer space.

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