India and Sweden signed a memorandum of understanding on space cooperation during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Gothenburg on Sunday, with the two countries’ space agencies formally committing to collaborate on an instrument that will fly aboard India’s Venus Orbiter Mission, scheduled for launch in March 2028.
PM Modi visits Sweden for bilateral talks
The MoU, signed between the Indian Space Research Organisation and Sweden’s National Space Agency, was among the headline outcomes of the bilateral summit at which the two nations elevated their relationship to a Strategic Partnership. The Ministry of External Affairs, in its joint statement, noted that both Prime Ministers “expressed their commitment to pursue enhanced cooperation on space and geospatial technologies, taking note of India’s role as a leading space nation and the role of Sweden’s Esrange Space Center.” The statement also formally welcomed “the collaboration between the Indian Space Research Organisation and the Swedish Institute for Space Physics on the Indian Venus Orbiter Mission.”
It was Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson who put the sharpest point on what the agreement meant, speaking at the joint press conference alongside Modi and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “I see great scope for India and Sweden to pursue enhanced cooperation in this area, and I’m very pleased that our two space organisations have signed an MoU to collaborate on an instrument that will be part of the Venus Orbiter Mission. So Sweden is proud to be on our way to Venus, together with India,” he said.
Swedish PM says: Sky is not the limit for the Sweden-India partnership
Kristersson also placed the agreement in its historical context. “India’s Space Research Organisation and Sweden’s National Space Agency have joined forces since the 1980s,” he noted. “My government invests heavily in the development of orbital launch capability for defence purposes at S-Range. Our bilateral space cooperation has been ongoing for a long time.”
The space announcement sits within a wider technology agenda agreed at the summit. Both governments committed to strengthening cooperation through the Sweden-India Technology and Artificial Intelligence Corridor and to establishing an India-Sweden Joint Science and Technology Centre to anchor research linkages between academic institutions in the two countries.
The Venus Orbiter Mission — unofficially called Shukrayaan, from the Sanskrit for Venus and craft — is India’s first mission to the planet. Approved by the Union Cabinet in September 2024 at a total outlay of Rs 1,236 crore, the spacecraft is to be launched aboard the LVM-3 rocket into an initial elliptical orbit before eventually settling into a Venusian orbit with a periapsis of 500 km and an apoapsis of 60,000 km. The mission carries 19 payloads in all, spanning Indian and international instruments, and its Preliminary Design Review was completed in April 2026.
The three broad scientific objectives are the study of Venus’s surface and subsurface geology, its atmospheric chemistry and dynamics, and the influence of the Sun on the Venusian atmosphere. Scientists also hope the mission will shed light on how Venus — once believed to have been habitable and broadly similar to Earth — transformed into the hostile, carbon dioxide-choked world it is today.
Sweden’s contribution is the Venusian Neutrals Analyzer, developed by the Swedish Institute for Space Physics, which will conduct energetic neutral atom analysis of the planet’s upper atmosphere. It joins a payload from Russia’s Space Institute as part of ISRO’s growing international collaboration on the mission.
The launch window opens in March 2028, with the spacecraft expected to reach Venusian orbit by July of that year.
