The Hindu Business Line : 5-day Indo-US space summit in Bangalore

IT was inconceivable in the turbulent nineties and improbable even four years ago. But, later this month, the who's who of the Indian and US space sectors will meet for five days in Bangalore in the first ever Indo-US space summit and expo.

The conference from June 21-25 will explore the co-operation between the two countries in space science, applications and, of course, commerce.

From launch and satellite services support in the 1960s and 1970s and technology denial in the 1990s, Indo-US space ties have come a full circle with policy-makers from the US State Department, private industry coming here to interact with their Indian counterparts. Right now, everyone seems to want to move on from those old times.

The Indo-US conference on space science, applications and commerce will look to strengthen the existing collaboration in Earth observation (in the form of a marketing tie-up between ISRO and Space Imaging), applications like tele-education; space sciences and industry, academia-level exchanges. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Honeywell are some of the big names that are likely to participate in the conference.

"The foremost objective is to create an ambience promoting better civilian space co-operation as envisaged by the political leadership in November 2001.

"The summit is meant to spread the message among industry about the political will that now exists for mutually beneficial activities and to upscale the existing activities," a Department of Space official said.

"The other part is to showcase our respective capabilities in many areas," the official said, at the expo organised alongside the summit.

The US along with the European consortium leads the global space industry and market. Like few other developing countries, India too depends on the established US components industry for some of its crucial supplies for satellites.

The conference is organised by the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics and the Astronautical Society of India, with the support of ISRO, NASA, NOAA and key US industries.