France-Mexico space cooperation

French-Mexican Strategic Council meets

Monday 16 April, CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall took part in the meeting of the French-Mex ic an Strategic Council, set up with the mission to nurture proposals and projects aimed at boostingbilateral cooperation between the two nations. After completing the day’s business, the 50 Frenchand Mexican members of the council were received by French President Emmanuel Macron beforea concluding meeting chaired by Jean-Yves Le Drian, France’s Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs.
Since the signature in April 2014 in Mexico City of their framework agreement, CNES and AEM,  the Mexican space agency, have continued to develop ever-closer ties, working notably towards tacklingclimate change. In particular, the meeting of the world’s heads of space agencies in Mexico City inSeptember 2015 and the subsequent adoption of the Mexico Declaration were instrumental inrecognizing the key role of satellites during preparations in the run-up to the COP21 climateconference.

In his address, Jean-Yves Le Gall underlined the importance of climate actions. As part of  the  One Planet Summit organized by President Macron in December 2017, a large number of space agencies including AEM adopted the Paris Declaration that laid the foundation for the Space Climate Observatory (SCO) proposed by CNES. This year will be devoted to defining possible contributions from SCO’s partners. On the sidelines of the One Planet Summit, France and Mexico’s Ministers forForeign Affairs also signed a statement of intent on the French-Mexican initiative concerning climate change coping and resilience strategies in the Caribbean, to which the SCO will obviously be contributing.
CNES’s President also underlined the many areas in which CNES and AEM are working together, for example in ocean observation, forest resource management, water quality monitoring and image processing, as well as atmospheric science ballooning. He then pointed to the installation in Mexico of the COLIBRI telescope (Catching OpticaL and Infrared BRIght transients) for the French-Chinese SVOM astronomy mission. Lastly, he emphasized France’s excellent industrial and commercial relations with Mexico, buoyed by the successful launches by Ariane of Mexican telecommunications satellites and the supply of optical satellite imagery to several Mexican ministries and military agencies.
After today’s meeting, Jean-Yves Le Gall commented: “I am delighted to see how AEM’s dynamism has been driving fruitful collaboration with CNES since the signature of our framework agreement in 2014, at institutional, scientific and industrial levels. We will now be sustaining and stepping up this great partnership with a France-Mexico space week in Mexico this autumn, where we will be charting the way ahead for our future cooperation.”

Source: CNES