Brazil: After Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Brasilia on the margins of the Sixth BRICS Summit, India and Brazil signed an agreement which would facilitate the Brazilian earth stations to receive and process data from Indian Remote Sensing satellites (IRS).
Confirming the news, a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) read, “The agreement provides for the reception of data from AWiFS and LISS-III payloads of IRS satellites, including but not limited to the Resourcesat-2 at Cuiaba earth station in Brazil on a government-to-government cooperation basis.”
AWIFS (Advanced Wide Field Sensor) is an optical sensor with intermediate spatial resolution. The LISS-III (Linear Imaging Self Scanning Sensor) sensor is an optical sensor working in four spectral bands (green, red, near infrared and short wave infrared). It covers a 141km-wide swath with a resolution of 23 metres in all spectral bands.
The agreement mandates the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB) to designate the National Institute for Space (INPE), the Brazilian executive agency for the subject of earth observation data reception, processing, archiving, and distribution to take responsibility and to work together with ISRO and its executive agency (National Remote Sensing Centre) to accomplish the actions put down.
ISRO will provide remotely sensed data of areas within the acquisition radius of INPE's earth station in Cuiaba acquired by AWiFS and LISS-III payloads of IRS satellites to INPE. The agreement also requires ISRO to provide INPE with the specific hardware required to augment the Cuiabá earth station and facilitate the reception of IRS satellite data, including the Resourcesat-2 AWiFS and LISS-III. ISRO will also provide the front-end hardware and software upgrades required to process and generate products from the IRS satellite data it receives. And finally, ISRO’s responsibility also entails providing the necessary training to INPE´s technical staff on IRS satellite data reception and processing, including for Resourcesat-2.
The statement issued also mentions that the agreement shall remain in effect for as long as Brazil and India agree to continue their cooperation regarding the reception of IRS satellite data. However, the same would have to be communicated every three years through exchange of notes.
The financial terms of the agreement states that INPE will, with its own regular budgetary resources, bear the cost for augmentation of the existing Resourcesat-1 hardware infrastructure at Cuiabá ground station for the purpose of receiving such data.
Source: Our correspondent.
