page_title: French space program
section_title: Collaborations
hierarchical_section_title: French space program / Collaborations
caption_attribution_description: English: Fly-around view of the International Space Station (ISS) from STS-127 crew on the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Backaway view of the forward (FWD) side of the European Columbus Module. Image ID: s127e009781
context_page_description: The French space program includes both civil and military spaceflight activities. It is the 3rd oldest institutional space program in history, along with the USSR and the US; and the largest space program in Europe.
context_section_description: France's public involvement in space technologies is also deep into European programs such as Columbus and Automated Transfer Vehicle, through Thales Alenia, headquartered in Cannes.
  The French space program includes collaborations between its institutions and other countries, European as well as other foreign countries and institutions (JAXA, ISRO, NASA, CNSA) in projects ranging from the Herschel Space Observatory to BepiColombo, Saral/Altika and the Planck space observatory.
  Since 2010, France and Russia have been collaborating on several space missions, including long-run science programmes like Cardiomed, dedicated to monitoring cardiovascular health in cosmonauts.
  In 2016, for the COP21, CNES and ISRO impulsed a groundbreaking and worldwide plan to unite all space agencies for the gathering of satellite information and detection on greenhouse gas emissions, allowing more precise measurements and decision making. In addition, CNES and ESA have a strong background of collaboration, notably building the largest single satellite surveyance program for earth's biological monitoring (Copernicus Programme).
  CNES has provided essential instruments (cameras) on an Indian mission to the Moon, launched in January 2018.
  A consortium led by the CNES also built Argos instruments on board the Indian mission Oceansat 3 in 2018. 
  A third collaboration between the ISRO and French space actors (Laboratoire d’études spatiales et d’instrumentation en astrophysique (Lesia), CNRS, Université Paris-VI and Université Paris-VII) has seen the launch of PicSat in January 2018, a nano-satellite that surveys the Beta Pictoris star for exoplanets.
  In 2020, Solar Orbiter was launched by NASA, containing instruments designed by CNES and other French industrial actors.
  The French space agency was also responsible for the construction of the main instruments on the French-German-American InSight mission to Mars, which launched on the May 5, 2018 and landed on the November 26, 2018.
  In October 2018, CNES and JAXA launched the BepiColombo mission to study the magnetic field of Mercury and map its surface.
caption: Columbus module
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