Satellite with ARgos and ALtika [SARAL] - Indo-French Scientific Venture

The SARAL/AltiKa project is a collaboration between France and India in the environment monitoring domain. On a platform developed by the indian space agency (ISRO), two independant payloads will be embarked, ARGOS-3 and AltiKa (+DORIS, +LRA), but their missions have the save objective: to promote the study of the environment from space. ARGOS-3 is an element of the ARGOS system, dedicated to localisation, acquisition and distribution of environmental data. AltiKa is an innovating Ka-band altimeter system, dedicated to accurate measurement of ocean surface topography. It is envisioned as a successor of RA-2 instrument on board ESA's satellite ENVISAT. http://smsc.cnes.fr/SARAL/ http://isro.org/pslv-c20/c20-status.aspx