Modi calls for BRICS cooperation in space exploration as India lands on the moon

India has urged different BRICS member states to cooperate in space exploration applications.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has urged BRICS member nations to type a “space research consortium” to deepen cooperation in space. He spoke at the plenary session of the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.

BRICS is a grouping of the world economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa fashioned by the 2010 addition of South Africa to the predecessor BRIC. The theme for this 12 months’s summit, to be held from 23-25 August, is “BRICS and Africa: Partnership for mutually accelerated growth, sustainable development and inclusive multilateralism.”

“We are already working on the BRICS satellite constellation, but to move a step further, we should think about establishing a BRICS space exploration consortium,” Modi stated.

Additionally, the Indian head of state additionally pitched cooperation in the training, ability improvement, and expertise sectors “in order to make BRICS a future-ready organisation”.

Interestingly, on the similar day that Modi made the pledge, 385,000 kilometres away, Indian spacecraft, Chandrayaan-3 landed on the southern polar area of the moon. The craft is ready to start exploring an space of the moon that has but to be visited. The touchdown makes India the first nation to ever attain this a part of the lunar floor in one piece—and solely the fourth nation ever to land on the moon.

Despite at the moment not having an energetic space programme, South Africa has in the previous launched missions to the stars. In the Eighties, work on the improvement of a launcher and a satellite tv for pc had been in progress however was discontinued after 1994. In 1999, South Africa launched its first satellite tv for pc, SUNSAT from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the US. A second satellite tv for pc, SumbandilaSat, was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in 2009.