After Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) created history by launching 104 satellites in one go, the European Space Agency (ESA) is eying India to collaborate with them on its space missions. ESA’s Senior Scientific Advisor Mark McCaughrean said that they are planning to further their partnership with ISRO in various space missions.
McCaughrean said that he had an informal discussion with former ISRO chairman UR Rao at Bangalore. If done, this will not the first time that ESA will be working with ISRO. Earlier, ESA had partnered with ISRO on Chandrayaan-1 mission to Moon. He also added that it is the precision in placing satellites and cost reduction that matters the most in the collaboration.
ESA is currently working on 15 space missions including Bepe Colombo which will be the first probe to Mercury in 2018. The project is a joint mission between ESA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Apart from that, it is also working on the ambitious Jupiter Icy moons Explorer (JUICE) to Jupiter in 2022.
ISRO had on Wednesday created a world record by launching 104 satellites in a single flight of PSLVC37 from the Sriharikota rocket port in Andhra Pradesh. Earlier, the Russian Space Agency had successfully launched 37 satellites in one go. Of 101 co-passenger satellites, 96 belong to USA, five from International customers of ISRO — Israel, Kazakhstan, Netherlands, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, respectively.
The two Indian Nano-satellites INS-1A and INS-1B were developed as co-passenger satellites to accompany bigger satellites on PSLV. The primary objective of INS (ISRO Nano Satellite) is to provide an opportunity for ISRO technology demonstration payloads, provide a standard bus for launch on demand services.
