Bilateral cooperation with Argentina

In 1997, the governments of the Kingdom of Belgium and the Republic of Argentina signed a cooperation agreement on space activities.

In 2000, this agreement resulted in the establishment of a collaboration between the two countries within the framework of the SAOCOM programme. SAOCOM, which stands for "Argentine Microwaves Observation Satellite" in Spanish, is an initiative of the Argentine Space Agency (CONAE) whose goal was to launch L-band satellites. These satellites were to serve as tools for the protection of the environment by helping to predict and monitor natural risks. CONAE for Argentina and BELSPO for Belgium have been designated as responsible entities. The main result of this collaboration was the conception and delivery to CONAE by the Centre Spatial de Liège (CSL) of a SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) processor allowing the transformation of raw radar data provided by the satellites into usable images as well as the delivery of post-processing tools.

As the project was several years behind schedule, the two satellites of the SAOCOM program were finally only launched in 2019 and 2020 respectively. BELSPO and CONAE are currently discussing access to data for Belgian institutional users in accordance with the agreement signed in 2000.