Indo-French TRISHNA Satellite Set for Launch Within Sixteen Months

India and France will launch their joint satellite mission, TRISHNA, in the next 12 to 16 months. The announcement came from Jasvinder Singh Khoral, who serves as Director of Projects at the U.R. Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru.

Project Details

TRISHNA stands for Thermal Infra-Red Imaging Satellite for High-resolution Natural Resource Assessment. This mission marks the third joint satellite project between India and France, following earlier collaborations on the Megha-Tropiques and SARAL missions. The project has spent about a decade in planning and formalization before reaching its current building stage. The U.R. Rao Satellite Centre will build the satellite bus and payloads, while the French space agency CNES will supply the other half of the payloads. Both nations will process the mission data jointly.

Mission Objectives

Nagalakshmi A.M., the project director, stated that the main goal of the mission is better management of water resources through visible shortwave and thermal infrared Earth observation. The mission will follow an open data policy to share science data freely across the world. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle will carry the satellite into space. The spacecraft features two main instruments: a Thermal Infra-Red payload built by CNES and a Visible-Near Infra-Red Short Wave Infra-Red payload built by ISRO.

Context

Joint space missions between India and France have a long history of sharing scientific technology and meteorological data. Such Earth observation satellites help researchers track surface temperatures, water usage, and environmental shifts on a global scale.