Feb 27, 2006, 11:03 GMT
New Delhi - The US will cooperate with India on 'Chandrayaan-1', the South Asian country's maiden mission to the moon, a news report said Monday.
Such an agreement will be inked during the visit of US President George W Bush to India beginning Wednesday.
Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chairman G Madhavan Nair told the Indian Express that a 'lunar mission cooperation agreement' will be signed during the Bush visit.
Nair confirmed that 'an agreeable text has been arrived at and a Chandrayaan Specific agreement will be inked.'
The report said US's National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and ISRO had worked out a memorandum of understanding which paves the way for cooperation in Chandrayaan (which means moon-craft in Sanskrit).
India has already agreed to launch two US payloads on the lunar mission.
About a dozen agreements in areas such as agriculture and biotechnology are due to be signed during Bush's visit. Bush is the fifth US President to visit India since the country achieved independence from Britain in 1947.
ISRO plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to the moon which will later take a polar orbit. The space agency announced last year that Chandrayaan will be launched by 2008.
The 89 million dollar project is aimed at expanding the scientific knowledge about the moon, upgrading India's technological capability and providing challenging opportunities for planetary research, the PTI news agency reported.
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