Successful mission for the Franco-Israeli Venµs satellite
Successful landing for the first Franco-Israeli satellite Venµs, intended to carry out earth observation missions as part of the GMES global monitoring program for the environment and security.
Venµs is a mini-satellite at the heart of the first joint space mission between the Israeli Space Agency (ASI) and the French space agency (CNES). The project was launched after the signing of a memorandum of understanding signed in 2005 between the two agencies.
The mission has three objectives:
- A scientific objective, by providing high-resolution data on the evolution of vegetation under the effect of environmental and human factors
- A technological objective through the implementation of a new electric propulsion system for altitude changes to replace existing chemical propulsion systems
- A political breakthrough as the launch of this 265kg satellite, on August 2, 2017 at 4:58 a.m. local time, marked Israel's return to the Guyanese Kourou space center, 20 years after its last launch (1996)
Another Franco-Israeli project is underway and will constitute a world first: the C3IEL (Cluster for Cloud Evolution, ClimatE and Lightning) project which promises to explore convective clouds from space using a train of two synchronized nanosatellites.
