ISRO tour in Bangalore

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is to commence his four-day India trip with a visit to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) here today, where the spotlight will be on bilateral space cooperation.

The French President is slated to land at the HAL airport at 10 am in a special French aircraft, from where he will head to the Leela Palace hotel on the old Airport Road.
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He will then proceed to ISRO Satellite Centre and deliver an address to some 500 attendees comprising of scientists from ISRO and other institutions, senior executives of various companies, and students.

Sarkozy is likely to have a brief interaction with top ISRO officials, who are expected to take him on a short visit around the facility.

The focus is expected to be on Indo-French space collaborative projects, the Megha Tropiques and Saral (Satellite for Argos and Altika).

Megha-Tropiques, which is being jointly developed by ISRO and French National Space Agency (CNES), is expected to be launched by 2011 to study tropical climate.

Another ISRO-CNES mission to be launched next year is Saral for seasonal forecast, oceanography and climate studies.

"We have strong relationship with the French space agency," former ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair said. "We worked together on many projects.

The Megha-Tropiques and Saral are the two projects that are going to be realised soon.
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This we have been working for last several years and I am sure it will pave way for more stronger collaboration for the future. The visit will provide momentum to the projects."

Security was tightened in and around the city in view of Sarkozy's visit.