India and the European Union (EU) have signed an agreement that will enable them to share earth observation data from each other’s satellites. The pact was inked in Bengaluru yesterday by Philippe Brunet, Director for Space Policy, Copernicus and Defence, on behalf of the European Commission, and by Scientific Secretary, PG Diwakar.
The Copernicus programme provides a wide range of applications like climate change, land, ocean and atmosphere monitoring as well as support in forecasting, management and mitigation of natural disasters.
Under this arrangement, Indian Space Research Organisation ISRO will share data from its earth observation satellites. The European Commission will provide India with free, full and open access to the data from the Copernicus Sentinel family of satellites using high bandwidth connections from data hub to data hub. This will provide both the sides, the data on climate change, weather forecasting and natural disasters.