Knowledge from NISAR will map adjustments to Earth’s floor, serving to enhance crop administration, pure hazard monitoring, and monitoring of sea ice and glaciers.
A brand new U.S.-India satellite tv for pc known as NISAR (NASA-ISRO Artificial Aperture Radar) will present high-resolution information enabling scientists to comprehensively monitor the planet’s land and ice surfaces like by no means earlier than, constructing an in depth document of how they shift over time. Hailed as a essential a part of a pioneering 12 months for U.S.-India civil house cooperation by President Trump and Prime Minister Modi throughout their go to in Washington in February, the NISAR launch will advance U.S.-India cooperation and profit the U.S. within the areas of catastrophe response and agriculture.
As the primary joint satellite tv for pc mission between NASA and the Indian Area Analysis Organisation (ISRO), NISAR marks a brand new chapter within the rising collaboration between the 2 house businesses. Years within the making, the launch of NISAR builds on a robust heritage of profitable packages, together with Chandrayaan-1 and the latest Axiom Mission 4, which noticed ISRO and NASA astronauts residing and dealing collectively aboard the Worldwide Area Station for the primary time.
The knowledge NISAR supplies will assist decision-makers, communities, and scientists monitor agricultural fields, refine understanding of pure hazards corresponding to landslides and earthquakes, and assist groups put together for and reply to disasters like hurricanes, floods, and volcanic eruptions. The satellite tv for pc will even present key world observations of adjustments to ice sheets, glaciers, and permafrost, in addition to forests and wetlands.
The NISAR mission is slated to launch no sooner than July 30 from Satish Dhawan Area Centre on India’s southeastern coast aboard an ISRO Geosynchronous Satellite tv for pc Launch Automobile.
Listed here are 5 issues to learn about NISAR:
1. The NISAR satellite tv for pc will present a 3D view of Earth’s land and ice.
Two synthetic aperture radars (SARs) aboard NISAR will detect adjustments within the planet’s floor all the way down to fractions of an inch. The spacecraft will bounce microwave alerts off Earth’s floor and obtain the return alerts on a radar antenna reflector measuring 39 ft (12 meters) throughout. The satellite tv for pc’s means to “see” via clouds and lightweight rain, day and night time, will allow information customers to repeatedly monitor earthquake- and landslide-prone areas and decide how rapidly glaciers and ice sheets are altering. It additionally will provide unprecedented coverage of Antarctica, data that may assist with learning how the continent’s ice sheet adjustments over time.
2. Knowledge from NISAR will present essential insights to assist governments and decision-makers plan for pure and human-caused hazards.
Earthquakes, volcanoes, and getting older infrastructure can pose dangers to lives and property. In a position to see delicate adjustments in Earth’s floor, NISAR can assist with hazard-monitoring efforts and doubtlessly give decision-makers extra time to organize for a attainable catastrophe. For earthquakes, NISAR will present insights into which elements of a fault slowly transfer with out producing quakes and that are locked collectively and will doubtlessly slip. The satellite tv for pc will be capable to monitor the world round hundreds of volcanoes, detecting land motion that might be a precursor to an eruption. In terms of infrastructure corresponding to levees, aqueducts, and dams, NISAR information collected over time can assist managers detect if close by land movement might jeopardize key buildings, after which assess the integrity of these services.
3. Essentially the most superior radar system ever launched as a part of a NASA or ISRO mission, NISAR will generate extra information each day than any earlier Earth satellite tv for pc from both company.
Concerning the size of a pickup truck, NISAR’s most important physique accommodates a dual-radar payload — an L-band system with a 10-inch (25-centimeter) wavelength and an S-band system with a 4-inch (10-centimeter) wavelength. Every system is delicate to land and ice options of various sizes and makes a speciality of detecting sure attributes, corresponding to moisture content material, floor roughness, and movement. By together with each radars on one spacecraft — a primary — NISAR will probably be extra succesful than earlier SAR missions. These two radars, one from NASA and one from ISRO, and the information they’ll produce, exemplify how collaboration between spacefaring allies can obtain greater than both would alone.
The radars will generate about 80 terabytes of knowledge merchandise per day over the course of NISAR’s prime mission. That’s roughly sufficient information to fill about 150 512-gigabyte onerous drives every day. The knowledge will probably be processed, saved, and distributed by way of the cloud — and accessible to all.
4. The NISAR mission will assist monitor ecosystems world wide.
The mission’s two radars will monitor Earth’s land and ice-covered surfaces twice each 12 days. Their near-comprehensive protection will embrace areas not beforehand coated by different Earth-observing radar satellites with such frequency. The NISAR satellite tv for pc’s L-band radar penetrates deep into forest canopies, offering insights into forest construction, whereas the S-band radar is good for monitoring crops. The NISAR information will assist researchers assess how forests, wetlands, agricultural areas, and permafrost change over time.
5. The NISAR mission marks the primary collaboration between NASA and ISRO on a mission of this scale and marks the following step in a protracted line of Earth-observing SAR missions.
The NISAR satellite tv for pc options elements developed on reverse sides of the planet by engineers from ISRO and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory working collectively. The S-band radar was constructed at ISRO’s Area Purposes Centre in Ahmedabad, whereas JPL constructed the L-band radar in Southern California. After engineers from JPL and ISRO built-in NISAR’s devices with a modified ISRO I3K spacecraft bus and examined the satellite tv for pc, ISRO transported NISAR to Satish Dhawan Area Centre in Could 2025 to organize it for launch.
The SAR method was invented within the U.S. in 1952 and now international locations across the globe have SAR satellites for a wide range of missions. NASA first used the method with a space-based satellite tv for pc in 1978 on the ocean-observing Seasat, which included the primary spaceborne SAR instrument for scientific observations. In 2012, ISRO started launching SAR missions beginning with Radar Imaging Satellite tv for pc (RISAT-1), adopted by RISAT-1A in 2022, to assist a variety of purposes in India.
Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, JPL leads the U.S. part of the mission and supplied the L-band SAR. JPL additionally supplied the radar reflector antenna, the deployable growth, a high-rate communication subsystem for science information, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload information subsystem. NASA’s Goddard Area Flight Heart manages the Close to Area Community, which is able to obtain NISAR’s L-band information.
The ISRO Area Purposes Centre is offering the mission’s S-band SAR. The U R Rao Satellite tv for pc Centre is offering the spacecraft bus. The rocket is from Vikram Sarabhai Area Centre, launch companies are via Satish Dhawan Area Centre, and satellite tv for pc mission operations are by the ISRO Telemetry Monitoring and Command Community. The Nationwide Distant Sensing Centre is liable for S-band information reception, operational merchandise era, and dissemination.
To be taught extra about NISAR, go to:
Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 626-491-1943
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov
2025-090