- Overview: India and France have extended their strategic partnership into the cosmos. Today in New Delhi, the two nations signed a landmark “Space Security and Situational Awareness Pact.”
- Key Points:
- Defending the Orbit: As the militarization of space accelerates, both nations agreed to pool their deep-space radar and optical telescope networks to monitor hostile anti-satellite (ASAT) threats.
- Cyber Protection: The agreement focuses heavily on jointly defending vital communication and navigation satellites against state-sponsored hacking and signal hijacking attempts.
- Information Sharing: Intelligence agencies from ISRO and the French Space Agency (CNES) will now share real-time telemetry data to instantly track any unauthorized maneuvers by adversarial spy satellites.
- A Multipolar Order: This alliance firmly establishes an independent, democratic space bloc, ensuring that Earth’s orbit does not become a monopoly controlled by a single superpower.
- Q7. The French government’s premier space agency, a frequent collaborator with India’s ISRO, is known by the acronym:
- ESA
- NASA
- CNES
- JAXA
