ISRO’s mission to Venus is leaping forward in the process to collaborate on a mission to build a constellation of maritime surveillance satellites that will be able to trace illegal oil spillage by ships in Indian Ocean Region (IOR).
Parts of the surveillance satellites will be made in both nations and will be launched from India. The monitoring centre will also be based in India but will be operated jointly by both nations together.
IOR has several Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOC), which is used by many ships every day. This, this mission aims prominently to trace those illegal spillages of oils by the ships.
Satellites will have a revisit capability to make task acquisitions possible, several times a day and it will also be capable to detect oil slicks and their origin.
The system will serve the wide economic interests of France by covering a broad belt around the globe and after a successful design phase led jointly by ISRO-CNES, the satellites will be ready to enter into the development stage in the coming months.
“It will provide continuous thermal monitoring at high resolution and it has unmatched capabilities of serving precious applications ranging from sustainable agriculture to drought forecasting and monitoring of urban heat islands, “ the official said.
Mission was committed in August, 2019 by both nations and this mission is going to be the world’s first space-based mission capable of tracing ships continuously by telecommunications, radar, and optical remote-sensing instruments.
This mission also reflects positive and growing healthy relations between India and France, which is however merely an addition to the numerous project collaboration between space agencies of both the nations.
Written by Khushbu Mathur
