Indo-French TRISHNA satellite in realisation stage, launch planned within 12-16 months

Key facts

• The Indo-French satellite TRISHNA (Thermal Infra-Red Imaging Satellite for High-resolution Natural Resource Assessment) is in the realisation stage and will be launched in the next 12-16 months, said Jasvinder Singh Khoral, Director (Projects), U.R. Rao Satellite Centre (URSC), on October 11, 2026.
• TRISHNA is the third satellite jointly developed by India and France after Megha-Tropiques and SARAL (Satellite with ARGOS and ALTIKA).
• The mission, a collaboration between ISRO and France's space agency CNES, aims at better management of water resources through visible, shortwave and thermal infrared Earth observation, and will be launched by the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.
• TRISHNA will carry two primary payloads: the Thermal Infra-Red (TIR) payload developed by CNES and the Visible-Near Infra-Red Short Wave Infra-Red (VNIR-SWIR) payload developed by ISRO, with data to be processed jointly in France and India under an open data policy.
• The satellite is designed to deliver high spatial and high temporal resolution monitoring of the Earth's surface temperature, emissivity, and biophysical and radiation variables for surface energy budgeting at regional to global scale.