The Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) is the French national space agency, a governmental organization responsible for shaping and implementing France's space policy. It is an institution, formed on December 19, 1961, under President Charles de Gaulle, making it the world's third oldest space agency. The agency was established to guarantee France's independent access to space and to invent future space systems. CNES operates from the Toulouse Space Centre and the Guiana Space Centre.
The agency's mechanism involves conceiving and executing space programs focused on five key areas: access to space, civil applications, sustainable development, security and defense, and science and technology research. It is overseen by the ministries of the Armed Forces, Economy and Finance, and Higher Education, Research and Innovation.
CNES is a pivotal player in Europe's space program and is closely connected to the European Space Agency (ESA). For an Indian reader, its most significant connection is its rich, six-decade-long cooperation with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). This partnership began in the early 1960s with the establishment of sounding rocket facilities at Thumba. The two agencies have collaborated as equal partners on joint satellite missions, including Megha-Tropiques (launched in 2011) for tropical atmosphere monitoring and SARAL (launched in 2013) for ocean surface topography. Currently, CNES is supporting India's Gaganyaan human spaceflight mission in areas like space medicine and is jointly developing the TRISHNA mission, a high-resolution thermal infrared Earth observation satellite scheduled for launch in 2027.