ISRO Chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar was right on the mark when he said on Thursday that space was exciting and had no limits to what you could do in the segment.
At least three of its overseas counterpart agencies floated interesting possibilities to be pursued jointly with India, during the ongoing World Space Biz conference or BSX 2016.
Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of French space agency CNES, said he looked forward to putting a “French eye” on a moon lander and rover of Indian startup Team Indus. The city-based young company is preparing to send a 600-kg lunar craft by December 2017 as a shortlisted global Google Lunar mission contestant.
The “French eye” is a micro-camera that will capture moon’s details up-close and send back.
The Swiss Space Centre, which has earlier launched a tiny satellite on the PSLV, has just discussed with ISRO the possibility of jointly sending a small spacecraft to clean space debris or dead satellites. Its director Volker Gass said space debris was the nightmare of satellite operators. The active debris cleaner satellite is planned to capture expired spacecraft and burn them in space.
Four members from the Space Industry Association of Australia — their biggest team to date — are exploring collaborations with ISRO, Indian Institute of Science and university-level exchange programmes. International Astronautical Congress 2017 will be hosted in Adelaide.
Six foreign satellites to fly with Scattsat-1 this month
Bengaluru: Six small commercial satellites of foreign customers are slated to be launched this month-end along with the ocean data gleaning Scattsat-1. ISRO chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar said Algerian satellites and three others would be launched on the PSLV.
On September 8, ISRO has lined up a GSLV launch carrying the weather satellite, INSAT-3DR.
