Let me say at this point that I hope that's the case. Why do I hope that? Several reasons: The United States is by no means a perfect nation, but we are the world's oldest democracy and we try very hard to live up to our ideals. India is the world's largest democracy, and I think that there must be opportunities for us to cooperate because of our fundamentally-shared values. In many respects, they are not completely shared, but there is a large overlap of shared values. I know this because of the many Indian friends that I have.

Another reason why I think cooperation between India and the United States in space can be useful for both sides is, the Indian technical community is superb. You have in India wonderful technical schools - scientific, mathematics, engineering; a population that values education in terms of a way to get ahead in life, to improve oneself.

In years past, in my generation, many of the best Indian students came to the United States and then stayed here. Now, many of those students are coming to the United States for advanced education and then going back home, which I think is good for the Indian people. But, that means that many people -- a significant number of India's technical community -- has had some education in America. So, they know us. There are two million Indians in America; so, many of us in the technical community have an opportunity to know them.

So we have had opportunities to get to know one another -- to learn common things together -- and it forms a basis for engineering and technical cooperation. Another reason we can work effectively together is that we do share a common language.

The times when I have been to India, and the many more times when I have worked with Indians over here in the States -- India has what, four or five official languages but the one language that almost all Indians have in common is English. So, surprisingly, there's a much lower language barrier between India and the United States than between the United States and everyone else we partner with, because everyone else is working in a second language.

For Indians, it might be their fourth language, but they all know English. So, for those reasons, there are very solid grounds for future cooperation.

You visited India in 2006 and 2007, and hosted your counterpart Dr Nair this year. But there was a time not too long ago -- just after the nuclear tests in May 1998 -- when ISRO had been slapped with sanctions, its officials were denied visas even to come here for conferences etc. Is that now a thing of the past? Have all sanctions been lifted against ISRO, and is space cooperation between NASA and ISRO now a given, where it can be exploited to its fullest potential?

I am not familiar either with the sanctions or the events that led up to them, and so I just shouldn't comment. I do know that our President (George W Bush) visited India shortly before I did, in the spring of 2006, and expressed a strong desire for greater cooperation between the two countries, which was well received on both sides. And I followed up with a visit to the space community. So, I hope that we are past any issues of sanctions, but I personally do not know where we stand on that and most crucially for your audience, NASA is not in charge of that. That is the purview of the State Department and others, but not NASA.

Image: A artist's impression of Chandrayaan.

Photo courtesy: ISRO

Also read: Remembering Those Who've gone

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