Strengthening international collaboration in Space

To celebrate the successful recent collaborations on the ISRO missions Aditya-L1 and Chandrayaan-3 and to expand the scope of cooperation in the Mission Operations domain, distinguished visitors from the Indian Space Research Organization were welcomed at ESOC right before the holidays.

Ms. Nigar Shaji (Project Director of Aditya-L1, URSC), Mr. Veeramuthuvel Palanivel (Project Director of Chandrayaan-3, URSC) and Mr. Raghavendra M. R (Deputy Director, Ground Stations Network Area, ISTRAC) handed out certificates to team members at ESOC who supported the missions during crucial phases.

Simon Plum (Head of Mission Operations Department), Holger Krag (Head of the Space Safety Programme Office) and Ramesh Chellathurai (ESA Service Manager for Chandrayaan-3 and Aditya-L1 missions) welcomed the ISRO team on behalf of ESA and presented a letter of appreciation.

Future collaborations

Yet it was not all about looking back, expanding our collaboration on potential future projects was the hot topic of the day:

- ESA’s Proba-3 mission will launch from India later this year.
- ESTRACK ground support for ISRO’s Gaganyaan programme working towards crewed space flights.
- Other long-term initiatives, such as ISRO’s potential participation in ESA’s Moonlight initiative for lunar communications.
- ISRO's future Lunar and Mars missions may also receive ground support from ESA, extending the scope of #GroundStation support for missions from both agencies.

We congratulate the ISRO team on the successful Aditya-L1 Halo Orbit Insertion on 6 January.

And we'd like to extend our gratitude for the positive and productive partnership between ESOC and ISRO and look forward to many more milestones to celebrate together!