PHOTO: CNSA

By Staff Reporters

BRICS countries launched the Joint Committee on Space Cooperation via video link on May 25, officially starting the sharing and exchanges of data from the BRICS Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation.

Zhang Kejian, administrator of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and president-elect of the committee, said that the committee will guide the constellation to better serve the economic and social development of BRICS countries, promote cooperation of higher quality between BRICS space agencies in the fields of environmental protection, disaster prevention and control and response to climate change, and realize the highly efficient sharing and effective use of data.

As early as 2015, CNSA proposed a cooperation initiative on the constellation. BRICS space agencies signed an agreement on such cooperation in August 2021. According to the agreement, a solution consisting of existing satellites and the five stations of BRICS countries was sealed.

The satellites are Gaofen-6 and Ziyuan III 02, both developed by China, CBERS-4, jointly developed by Brazil and China, Kanopus-V type, developed by Russia, and Resourcesat-2 and 2A, both developed by India. Five ground stations, located in Sanya in China, Cuiabá in Brazil, Moscow in Russia, Hyderabad in India and Hartebeesthoek in South Africa, can obtain data from the constellation.

The observation conducted by these coordinated and networked satellites and ground stations can reduce the cost of satellites and ground station construction, and greatly enhance the imaging capability of a single satellite, which will uplift the observation efficiency of BRICS satellites to a large degree.

On April 24 this year, CNSA established the Satellite Data and Applications International Cooperation Center and the BRICS Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation Data and Application Center in Wenchang, south China's Hainan province. The latter is responsible for promoting the coordination of constellation construction, data reception, processing, distribution, application and promotion, contributing to the comprehensive construction of the constellation.

At the video conference, the five space agencies from BRICS countries also updated their execution of the aforementioned agreement, and adopted documents on the committee's terms of reference, the technical specifications for data exchange, and the implementation procedures for joint observation.