Karen Andrews, Australian Minister of Industry, Science and Technology stated that Australian Space Agency (ASA), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) are working together to set up Temporary ground station tracking facilities in Australia for ISRO’s Gaganyaan Mission. She stated it while virtually addressing the 2020 Bengaluru Tech Summit held from November 19-21, 2020.
Gaganyaan Mission is an ambitious plan of ISRO to put an Indian in space by 2022.
Key Points:
i.Australia’s Geographical location, wide-open spaces, and low light pollution make it an ideal partner for space traffic management activities, remote asset management, and earth management services.
ii.The collaboration between India & Australia in the Space sector is based on a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in 2012.
iii.The collaboration between the two countries includes space life sciences, robotics, earth observation and data analytics.
iv.ASA & ISRO will collaborate in 7 National Civil Space Priority Areas of Australia such as Position, Navigation and Timing, Earth Observation, Communications Technologies and services, space situational awareness and debris monitoring.
v.India’s Gaganyaan Mission will make India just the 4th Nation to send a crew into space.United States(U.S.), Russia, China were the 3 nations which had already send Humans to space.
Recent Related News:
i.On 25th August 2020, ISRO signed a MoU with Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology (VSSUT), Burla, Odisha, a technical institute, to set up the first of its kind innovation cum incubation centre, VSSUT Space Innovation Centre(VSSSIC) in India to promote space research.
ii.On October 26, 2020, Ramanan Ramanathan, Mission Director Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) launched ‘India–Australia Circular Economy Hackathon (I-ACE)’ to be organized by NITI Aayog’s AIM on December 7-8, 2020 in association with Australia’s national science agency, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
About Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO):
Chairman – Dr. K. Sivan
Headquarters – Bengaluru, Karnataka
About Australia:
Prime Minister – Scott Morrison
Capital – Canberra
Currency – Australian Dollar (AUD)
