Bilateral Agreements on Space
In addition to being active in international organisations, Norway has several agreements with single countries.
A bilateral space agreement with Italy was signed in 2021. From left to right: Norway's ambassador to Italy, Johan C. Vibe, the President of ASI, Giorgio Saccoccia and Christian Hauglie-Hanssen, Director General of the Norwegian Space Agency.
Photo: ASI
USA is Norway's largest bilateral partner in space. This space collaboration includes downlinking data from American satellites and space probes to Norwegian ground stations, to the launch of American sounding rockets from Andøya for use in research, to the Perseverance rover on Mars and its Norwegian georadar Rimfax, and more.
Since the 1990s, Norway has also had a cooperation agreement to buy data from the Canadian radar satellites Radarsat-1 and Radarsat-2. These data are primarily used to monitor Norwegian waters and maritime traffic, but also to detect sea ice, oil spills, geohazards such as subsidence and landslides, and more.
Norway also has a cooperation agreement with the Japanese space organization JAXA on research on northern lights. This is done by using sounding rockets launched from Andøya and Svalbard. The Norwegian-Japanese space cooperation also includes solar research and data from several Japanese Earth observation satellites.
The Norwegian satellite NorSat Technology Demonstrator (NorSat-TD) includes payloads from both France, Italy and the Netherlands. Moreover, Norway has cooperation agreements with the French space organization CNES, the Italian space organization ASI, and the German space organization DLR.
In addition, Norway has bilateral agreements on space with the following countries: India, The Netherlands and Argentina.