NASA invites India to jointly explore Mars

India’s maiden mission to the Red Planet, Mangalyaan, has opened the eyes of the world on ISRO’s capabilities at undertaking low cost, high value inter-planetary mission. Charles Elachi, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory or JPL, a part of NASA and an institution better known for piloting most of the American planetary exploration efforts with rovers like Curiosity, says India and the US could jointly explore Mars and even invited India to send astronauts to the Red Planet.

“At NASA, we are just beginning to plan for next mission to Mars for the next decade, which is 2020-2030. In fact shortly, there is a meeting in Washington on possible collaborations for the next 5-6 missions to Mars and ISRO is invited for that meeting. This is in preparation for the ultimate human space flight to Mars. We clearly hope that India would be interested. Hopefully, India will be part of the consortium between US, Europe, France, Italy among others where all can capitalise on our capabilities to explore the solar system,” he said in an interview.