In view of officialising their collaboration, the MRIC and ISRO has signed  a Memorandum of Understanding highlighting the modalities for this collaboration and the roles and responsibilities of each party.

The Government of India will design, assemble and integrate, test, launch, deploy and control and operate a satellite for Mauritius.  

Once completed, the small satellite will be launched by ISRO, and the operation in orbit will be jointly carried out by ISRO and MRIC using the MRIC Ground Station.  

MRIC engineers will also be benefiting from free training at ISRO in India where they will closely collaborate with ISRO engineers to develop the satellite platform, associated systems, and the primary payload. The MRIC engineers will also be participating in milestone reviews and AIT (Assembly, Integration and Testing) activities of the satellite Platform along with the ISRO team with an intention to get hands on experience.  

The overall duration of the project, from signature of the MoU to the launching of the satellite in space, is estimated to be around 15 months.  

ISRO and MRIC will jointly work towards registering the Joint Satellite as a space object in the UNOOSA Space Object Registry and ensuring the registration of the satellite frequencies with the International Telecommunication Union.  

The MRIC conducted a survey to assess the needs for space data among Governmental Research institutions of Mauritius and it was found that the most appropriate payload for the next Mauritian Satellite would be a Multispectral imager. The latter is a special camera which can capture several frequency bands of light which, when decoded with the appropriate software, could provide valuable data for land and sea surface monitoring. The level of details is strictly subject to the resolution of the Multispectral camera used and the status of the satellite in orbit. Considering this, the primary payload for the joint satellite will be a Multispectral Imager.