New Delhi: The Australian Space Agency has announced that ISRO’s tracking antenna have reached Site 5 of the Old Quarantine Station on the Cocos or Keeling islands, a pair of remote atolls in the eastern Indian Ocean between Sri Lanka and Australia. Back in November 2024, an Implementation Agreement was signed between ISRO and the Australian Space Agency (ASA) towards deeper cooperation in the space domain. This included the Australian Navy agreeing to help with Gaganyaan crew module recovery in off-nominal splashdown situations, and the setting up of a temporary ground station at Cocos island in support of the Gaganyaan programme, to lift Indians to Earth orbit on domestic hardware and safely return them to the surface.
If any of the crewed or uncrewed missions are aborted at launch, the crew module is likely to splash down in Australian waters. The Australian authorities agreed to work with Indian authorities to ensure safe recovery. According to a joint statement released after the Second Australia-India Annual Summit in November 2024, after a meeting between the Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Anthony Albanese, “The Prime Ministers welcomed the growing space partnership between the two countries, both at space agency and space industry levels. Cooperation to support the Gaganyaan missions, the planned launch of Australian satellites on-board an Indian launch vehicle in 2026 and joint projects between our respective space industries exemplify this deepening collaboration.”
India Australia Space Cooperation
The Australian High Commissioner to India, Philip Green visited the ISRO HQ in Bengaluru September 2025 to discuss collaboration options in space, including over the Gaganyaan programme. In a visit to Australia in November 2025, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar met Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and said, “Let me take the opportunity to express our appreciation for your support for our Gaganyaan human spaceflight mission, and we welcome Australia’s plans to launch a satellite from an Indian launch vehicle.” This is the Space Maitri mission scheduled for launch in 2027 by an ISRO SSLV rocket. India is cooperating with a number of countries around the world for its ambitious human spaceflight programme, including USA, Russia, Australia and European nations.