About:
- Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and National Centre for Space Studies (CNES) will explore putting up a constellation of low-Earth orbiting satellites that will identify and track movement of ships globally esp. in the Indian Ocean where France has its Reunion Islands.
- Before that, they will initially share data from their present space systems and develop new algorithms to analyse them.
- The agreement comes a year after the broad collaboration plan the two governments initiated during French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit in March 2018.
Indo-French space collaboration:
- The two agencies have earlier put up two climate and ocean weather monitoring satellites Megha-Tropiques (2011) and SARAL-AltiKa (2013) that are considered a model for future space collaborations.
- This fleet will be augmented with the launch of Oceansat-3-Argos mission in 2020 along with a joint infrared Earth-observation satellite.
