France and India view each other as important partners in space technology and applications. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and its French counterpart Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) have a rich history of cooperation and collaboration spanning about five decades.
The first French-Indian space cooperation agreement was signed in May 1964 covered licenses to build Belier and Centaure sounding rockets in India, with the accompanying transfer of solid-propulsion technologies. The latest bilateral meeting between the chief of space agencies of France and India was held on 21st November 2014 at Bangalore.
To celebrate 50 years of space cooperation between CNES and ISRO, India Post and La Poste, France have issued a set of two commemorative stamps the SARAL/AltiKa and Megha-Tropiques satellites. Joint issue of set of two stamps was released by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande on 10th April 2015 at the Elysee Palace, Paris.
To mark the event, a temporary post office was opened for selling stamps and first day covers to the public at CNES’s head office in Paris Les Halles from 5.00 to 7.30 p.m. Indian stamps are in denomination of Rs. 5 (Satellite Megha-Tropiques) and Rs. 25 (Satellite Saral) where as French stamps are in denomination of € 0.76 (Satellite Saral) and 1.20 € (Satellite Megha-Tropiques).
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A miniature sheet is also issued by India Post. For the first time QR code has been incorporated on Indian Miniature Sheet. While scanning the QR code using QR Code reader one can read following text:
“India and France have cooperated in space exploration for fifty years now. The Cooperation is best illustrated by two missions that were developed and operated in partnership: a tropical atmosphere observation satellite, Megha-Tropiques, launched in 2011, and Saral- Altika, oceanography and localization satellite, launched in 2013. These missions aim to observe climatic phenomena in order to understand the mechanisms and anticipate their consequences on a planetary level.”
Megha-Tropiques is a satellite mission to study the water cycle in the tropical atmosphere in the context of climate change. A collaborative effort between Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and French Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), Megha-Tropiques was successfully deployed into orbit by a PSLV rocket in October 2011.
SARAL or Satellite with ARgos and ALtiKa is a cooperative altimetry technology mission of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and CNES (Space Agency of France). The ISRO built satellite with payloads modules (ALTIKA altimeter), DORIS, Laser Retro-reflector Array (LRA) and ARGOS-3 (Advanced Research and Global Observation Satellite) data collection system provided by CNES was launched by Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket into the Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO). ISRO is responsible for the platform, launch, and operations of the spacecraft. A CNES/ISRO MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) on the SARAL mission was signed on Feb. 23, 2007. SARAL was successfully launched on 25 February 2013.
MS Image Courtesy: Mansoor Bolar
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