ISRO renews EADS deal on commercial satellites

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO),on the sidelines of the visit of French President Nicolas Sarkozy,announced the renewal of a five-year contract with European space firm EADS Astrium to build commercial satellites to be launched from French space facilities.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO),on the sidelines of the visit of French President Nicolas Sarkozy,announced the renewal of a five-year contract with European space firm EADS Astrium to build commercial satellites to be launched from French space facilities.

ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan announced the renewal of the contract that in its first tenure saw EADS Astrium outsource the building of two private communication satellites W2M and the HYLAS to ISROs satellite centre while welcoming Sarkozy to ISROs satellite facilities at Bangalore.

The ISRO chairman announced a May 2011 launch date for the Indo French joint satellite programme called Megha Tropiques,intended to study tropical atmosphere in a larger exercise to understand the effects of climate change. ISRO also announced a December 2011 launch date for a second Indo French satellite programme SARAL intended to study oceans.

The Indian space programme,especially launch technologies,had benefited greatly from French technology provided nearly four decades ago,the ISRO chairman said.

Sarkozy said that India and France needed to work together on space technology to prevent space adventure from ever becoming the monopoly of just one or two states.

I would like to pay tribute to the success of ISRO with which we will build and launch the Megha Tropiques and SARAL groundbreaking satellites for climate and ocean observation next year. We will launch Indian satellites from Kourou and European satellites from India. CNES (French space agency) and ISRO will develop a new research programme together, said Sarkozy.