India’s first Mars Orbit mission this year offers an exciting opportunity for the collaboration between the two countries, a senior US official said.

“We should seek to increase our commercial space cooperation and create opportunities for US and Indian companies and our very capable space science communities have much to offer each other through collaboration,” said Geoffrey Pyatt, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.

“India’s first Mars Orbiter Mission, slated for October 2013, is an exciting opportunity for US-India collaboration,” he said in his address to the US-India Civil Space Joint Working Group held on Thursday.

The working group among others was attended by the NASA Administrator, John Bolden, and the Indian Ambassador to the US, Nirupama Rao.

This collaboration on innovation across a wide range of disciplines is generating new jobs for our people and helping to address many of the globe’s big challenges, Pyatt said.

Pyatt said the India-US space cooperation has become a signature aspect of science, technology, and innovation cooperation, highlighting both the constancy of their mutual respect and appreciation for each other’s capabilities through the decades, as well as the vast potential.