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India and France are working on their third joint satellite mission, even as the bilateral space collaboration is entering into multiple domains, including human spaceflight programme, ISRO Chairman K Sivan said. Sivan, also Secretary in the Department of Space, said many French companies are keen to tap into opportunities thrown up by recent reforms injected into the space sector by the Government. "France is the biggest partner of India in space", he said at the DST (Department of Science and Technology) Golden Jubilee Discourse on 'unlocking India's space potential - geospatial data & mapping', an event presented on virtual mode by the National Council for Science and Technology Communication and 'Vigyan Prasar' on Friday. According to ISRO officials, ISRO and French space agency CNES (Centre National dEtudes Spatiales) have undertaken two joint missions 'Megha-Tropiques', which was launched in 2011, and 'Saral-Altika' in 2013. "Currently, we are working for the .
Chandrayaan-3, India's third mission to Moon, is likely to be launched in 2022, ISRO chief K Sivan has said. The COVID-19 lockdown has hit several projects of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) including Chandrayaan-3, which was scheduled to be launched in late 2020, and Gaganyaan, the country's first manned space mission. Unlike its predecessor, Chandrayaan-3 will not have an orbiter. We are working on it. It is the same configuration like Chandrayaan-2 but it will not have an orbiter. The orbiter launched during Chandrayaan-2 will be used for Chandrayaan-3. With that we are working on a system and mostly the launch will be next year in 2022, Sivan told PTI. Chandrayaan-2, aimed at landing a rover on unchartered Lunar South Pole, was launched on July 22, 2019 on board the country's most powerful geosynchronous launch vehicle. However, the lander Vikram hard-landed on September 7, 2019, crashing India's dream to become the first nation to successfully land on the lunar