December 13, 2018

CNES and ISA receive award for VENµS mission at France-Israel Chamber of Commerce annual dinner

Wednesday 12 December, in the presence of Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, President of MEDEF, the French employers' confederation, CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall took part in the annual dinner of the France-Israel Chamber of Commerce (CCFI). This event, marking the closure of France-Israel Season 2018, gave the opportunity to distinguish CNES and the Israel Space Agency (ISA) for their exceptional contribution to nurturing exchanges between the two countries through the VENµS climate-monitoring mission.

Launched in August 2017 from the Guiana Space Centre (CSG), the French-Israeli VENµS satellite was co-developed by CNES and ISA to inform key decisions concerning the future of planet Earth. To this end, VENµS is supplying imagery of vegetation from more than 100 sites that it revisits every two days.

VENµS is designed to help the world’s scientific community to advance our understanding of climate change and its impacts and is helping to establish the Space Climate Observatory (SCO), one of the 12 commitments of the One Planet Summit, the first edition of which was organized at France’s initiative on 12 December 2017 in Paris.

On the sidelines of this event, Jean-Yves Le Gall commented: “The award we received this evening from the Prime Minister at the annual dinner of the France-Israel Chamber of Commerce is a further tribute to the successful cooperation between our two nations in space. The VENµS mission is a perfect illustration of CNES’s and ISA’s scientific and technological excellence and of our accomplishments together, which have been a feature of France-Israel Season 2018.”

CONTACTS
Pascale Bresson    Press Officer    Tel: +33 (0)1 44 76 75 39    pascale.bresson@cnes.fr
Raphaël Sart    Press Officer    Tel: +33 (0)1 44 76 74 51    raphael.sart@cnes.fr
Sébastien Martignac    Press Officer    Tel. +33 (0)1 44 76 78 35    sebastien.martignac@cnes.fr