CNES and ISRO to Establish Maritime Surveillance Centre in India
The French government space agency CNES (National Centre for Space Studies) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will soon implement the short-term plan for the French-Indian programme to develop a maritime surveillance system.
The programme will supply an operational system for detecting, identifying and tracking ships in the Indian Ocean. A maritime surveillance centre will be set up in India in May this year. Both agencies will share capacity to process existing satellite data and for the joint development of associated algorithms.
For the next phase of the programme, studies for an orbital infrastructure to be operated jointly by the two countries are ongoing. CNES is working with its industry partners and with ISRO to devise the most appropriate technical solution.
CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall and Sivan K, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), signed an agreement in this regard in Bangalore today. This signature follows on from the broader agreement signed last March during President Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to India.
“Our relationship with India is flourishing and maritime surveillance from space is a domain of strategic interest to our two nations. It is through the remarkable integration of CNES and ISRO teams that we have been able to deploy this programme in such a short time after it was launched during President Macron’s state visit to India just a year ago,” said Jean-Yves Le Gall, President, CNES.
The meeting between CNES’s President and ISRO’s Chairman also offered the opportunity to confirm the progress of the agencies’ work in the field of human spaceflight to lay the groundwork for missions of future Indian astronauts. A team of experts from ISRO will start receiving training this month at the Toulouse Space Centre, the CADMOS centre for the development of microgravity applications and space operations and the MEDES space clinic.
Collaboration on technologies for future launchers — notably reusable vehicles — and joint climate monitoring programmes were also addressed at the meeting.
The French-Indian Megha-Tropiques and SARAL-AltiKa satellites form a unique fleet of climate sentinels that are making a significant contribution to implementing the Paris Agreement, as acknowledged at the One Planet Summits in 2017 and 2018. This fleet, a model of bilateral cooperation now in place for more than 15 years, will be augmented with the launch in 2020 of the Oceansat-3-Argos mission and a future joint infrared Earth-observation satellite under study. Oceansat-3-Argos will be central to assuring operational continuity of the Argos system.
