Mexico seeks ISRO’s help to build and launch satellite

The Mexican Space Agency (AEM) has sought the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) help to build and launch a remote sensing satellite for Mexico.

The request seeking ISRO’s support was made at a recent meeting between ISRO Chairman S. Somanath and Dr. Salvador Landeros Ayala, Director General of AEM.

According to ISRO, the AEM chief sought India’s support in building and launching a remote sensing satellite for Mexico.

The Indian space agency said that it will work on this proposal with the Ministry of External Affairs’ (MEA) support.

“Both heads of the agencies discussed the ongoing cooperation activities mainly in earth observation. While thanking ISRO for developing a mobile application for forest fire monitoring and sharing it with the Mexican Forest Department, AEM chief sought India’s support in building and launching a remote sensing satellite for Mexico,” said ISRO.

Ambassador of India to Mexico Dr. Pankaj Sharma, Ambassador of India to Mexico and Gustavo A. Cabrera Rodriguez, Ambassador of Mexico for the Latin American and Caribbean Space Agency (ALCE) also participated in the meeting.

ISRO said that in the meeting India’s interest in expanding space cooperation in the Latin American and Caribbean region through ALCE was also discussed.

In June last year, ISRO and AEM signed a Scientific Cooperation Agreement on Crop Monitoring and Capacity Building and in 2014 the two space agencies had signed a Memorandum of Understanding for peaceful purposes.

As per the agreement, the two space agencies would explore the development of remote sensing techniques for crop monitoring using Earth Observation data for the United Mexican States and generate user friendly operational tools, techniques, procedures for agricultural drought monitoring over agricultural regions of United Mexican States using open access earth observation data products, drought indices and products at suitable spatial and temporal resolutions for monitoring at aggregate level. The Hindu