NISAR developed by NASA and ISRO set for January launch

The NASA Isro Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR), the low earth orbit observatory being jointly developed by NASA and Isro, is on course for a January 2024 launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota.

Ana Maria Guerrero, NISAR system manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said the operations team was looking to complete the testing and set a “December-January time frame” for the launch.

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The observatory is aimed at measuring the earth’s changing ecosystems, ice mass, ocean levels and natural hazards including tsunamis, earthquakes, and landslides. NISAR is equipped with a dual-band SAR and comes with capabilities to achieve high-resolution data, covering changes to the centimetre and imaging the entire earth in 12 days.

"For the project, the two teams brought different kinds of expertise to the table. It has been an exciting collaboration between the two organisations (NASA and Isro) and we do see a possibility of such collaborations in the future," Guerrero told DH.

The data, sourced as part of the mission, will be made freely available to the public. Access to the data is expected to significantly enhance applications for analysis across domains – from glacier flow rates to cropland changes to disaster planning.