Airbus will support France and
India to monitor climate change with TRISHNA
20 April 2020
The French Space Agency (Centre
National d’Etudes Spatiales, CNES) has recently signed a
contract with Airbus Defence and Space for the
development and manufacture of the thermal infrared
instrument for the TRISHNA satellite.
TRISHNA (Thermal infraRed Imaging
Satellite for High resolution Natural resource
Assessment) will be the latest satellite in the joint
Franco-Indian satellite fleet dedicated to climate
monitoring and operational applications. CNES and ISRO
(Indian Space Research Organisation) are partnering on
the development of an infrared observation system with
high thermal resolution and high revisit capability
including a satellite and associated ground segment.
TRISHNA observations will enhance
our understanding of the water cycle and improve
management of the planet’s precious water resources, to
better define the impacts of climate change, especially
at local levels.
In the international partnership
workshare, ISRO will provide the platform, the visible
and short wave infrared instrument and will be the prime
contractor for the satellite, while CNES is
co-responsible for the mission and will provide the
thermal infrared instrument, to be developed by Airbus.
The ground segment is shared between both countries.
For this mission, Airbus is
leveraging the latest innovations and synergies from
other programmes (IASI-NG, CO3D…) to offer an affordable
high performance instrument, with the aim of encouraging
development of a commercial market.
Measuring surface temperatures
provides information on hydric stress - a lack of water
- and its impact on the vegetative cycle, and this
monitoring of water and energy cycles is one of the main
objectives of the mission, to be applied particularly in
agriculture and hydrology. This mission will also serve
numerous other applications: surveillance of continental
and coastal waters, follow up of urban heat traps, risk
monitoring (fire detection and volcanic activity), study
of the cryosphere (glaciers, frozen lakes) and radiation
budget assessment.
TRISHNA represents a significant
step forward, both in terms of resolution and refresh
rate, compared with existing missions, improving
research opportunities and enabling further development
of applications.
While existing missions are limited
in terms of resolution (above 1km) and with revisit only
every few weeks, TRISHNA will image the Earth every
three days, at 50m resolution, observing a wide
temperature range, from approx. -20°C to +30°C, with
high precision (0.3°C).
Jean-Marc Nasr, Head of Space
Systems at Airbus said: “Thanks to ambitious science
missions like TRISHNA, our industry has reached a
technological maturity that opens up a new era of
commercial observation of the Earth and all related
applications. France’s world-leading expertise in the
Earth observation export market, combined with the
unmatched efficiency and ambition of the Indian Space
industry is going to bring thermal infrared imagery to a
new level. This will enable breakthrough applications in
agriculture, urban and coastal zone management,
meteorology, climate science and many commercial
applications.”

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