1957. In response, Khrushchev presented a precondition for any future space agreements. Khrushchev demanded that the United States would first need to remove its nuclear-launch capabilities in Turkey. This signaled a future trend of space agreements as a means for nuclear disarmament. Despite the continued space competition between the United States and U.S.S.R., Khrushchev wrote a letter to U.S. president John F. Kennedy detailing the possibility of future space cooperation between the two sworn rivals after American John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962. These discussions between the Soviet Union and the United States led to cooperation in three areas: weather data and future meteorology-related launches, the mapping of the geomagnetic field of the Earth, and the relay of communication. India The relationship between the Soviet Union and India was a significant part of the Cold War. Both political and scientific in nature, this cooperation lasted for nearly 40 years. Over this span of nearly four decades, Soviet-Indian relations maintained through three pairs of leaders—Jawaharlal Nehru and Nikita Khrushchev, Indira Gandhi and Leonid Brezhnev, and Rajiv Gandhi and Mikhail Gorbachev. This Indo-Soviet relationship can be seen being stemmed from India's distrust and general unsatisfactory feeling towards Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration's insistence that Third World countries could not remain neutral during the Cold War and with American hesitation to consult with their governments on issues pertinent to these countries. India's pro-Soviet stance was professed when the government of Indira Gandhi broke with the rest of the non-communist world to embrace and support the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the UN General Assembly, despite earlier comments criticizing the operation. The former ambassador, Inder Kumar Gujral, commented that the deep involvement of Pakistan in mobilizing the Afghan mujahideen was a concern for Indian security and stability, while also expressing India's "friendship" with the Soviets. India was also the only country outside the Soviet bloc to fully recognize the People's Republic of Kampuchea after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. Space Cooperation Scientific cooperation between the Soviet Union and India began with the formal establishment of an Indo-Soviet Joint Committee of Scientists, which held its first meeting in January 1968. The Soviet Union was a major contributor to India's space effort. Most notably, Soviet technical assistance in design and launching was paramount to the success of Indian satellites Aryabhata, Bhaskara-I and Bhaskara-II. When considering India's reputation for poverty and