The Hindu Business Line : ISRO, Astrium pact to fly French satellites on PSLVs

Bangalore, Sept. 30 French-made remote-sensing satellites may be launched on ISRO’s PSLV rockets and delivered to commercial customers directly in space.

An agreement to this effect was signed between ISRO’s Antrix Corporation and French satellite maker Astrium as part of three agreements made on Tuesday during the Prime Minister’s visit to Paris.

The Chairman of ISRO and Antrix, Dr G. Madhavan Nair, and Astrium’s CEO, Mr Francois Auque, signed the in-orbit delivery proposition by which Astrium will build EO satellites for the international customers, launch them on PSLV rockets at attractive packages.

Astrium is a subsidiary of defence and aerospace major EADS.

Some years back, another European launch major Arianespace also made a similar agreement to market ISRO’s launch services for small communications satellites.

This is part of the three agreements signed with French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales) during Dr Manmohan Singh’s visit. They address government-level, academic and industry-level co-operation, an ISRO release here on Tuesday said.

“During the past five years, both companies have been successfully cooperating in space activities, as evidenced by the award of two telecommunication satellite contracts, W2M for Eutelsat and HYLAS for Avanti Systems. These agreements are expected to boost the relationship between the two countries in the area of space and encourage further co-operation,” the release said.

Partners since 1993, ISRO and CNES are already tied up for satellite missions such as Megha-Tropiques and SARAL.

The government-level cooperation agreement for peaceful exploration of outer space covers development of small satellites and ground infrastructure for them, joint research and development, instrumentation for satellites, study of weather and climate change using earth observation satellites.

An MoU was signed for academic and research collaboration between the year-old Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) of ISRO and Ecole Polytechnique of Paris and involving students and professionals.

EP is the oldest such institute and offers advanced undergraduate, masters and doctoral programmes in fundamental and applied sciences and in engineering.

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