New Delhi: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Bhutan’s Department of Information Technology and Telecom (DITT) on Friday virtually signed an agreement for the joint building of a small satellite, CubeSat, for Bhutan which will be entirely funded by India.
Ambassador of India to Bhutan Ruchira Kamboj informed that Bhutanese engineers will leave for Bengaluru in October to prepare for the launch of the satellite in December 2021.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on “Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space”, between India and Bhutan was signed in November 2020 with both ISRO and DITT jointly working on the project.
The ISRO has already organized the first round of training for a team of four Bhutanese space engineers from the DITT at the UR Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) in Bengaluru, for two months.
Bhutan’s satellite will be launched into space alongside OceanSat 3, an earth observation satellite dedicated to the study of the atmosphere and ocean, on a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.
(Venkatesh Iyer)