Starting as early as Monday, August 21, Russia and India will make attempts to land their separate lunar lander missions on the moon’s south pole, where water-ice – space’s version of gold – has been found. Traditionally, Russia and India have been fast friends on earth, but competing visions and national interests in the space domain are revealing fault lines. Laura Winter speaks with Namrata Goswami, an independent scholar on space policy and great power politics and co-author of the book “Scramble for the Skies”; and Pavel Luzin, a space, Russia, and international security expert, lecturer, and author, and also visiting scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
