NISAR Mission on track for a launch soon: NASA official

Key Highlights

‘Enormous data’

• Designed as a low earth orbit (LEO) observatory, the NISAR mission is unique in several respects
  • Not least the enormous amount of reliable, high resolution data expected from it over a three-year mission life.
• The volume of data will be enormous, and it helps us to have a reliable set of measurements over any spot on the earth
  • Where we want to do science or monitoring applications, forest management, agriculture monitoring or even just looking at an approaching hurricane
• The mission will use a synthetic aperture radar to scan earth’s land and ice-covered regions twice every 12 days in ascending and descending passes.
• Capable of penetrating cloud cover and operating day and night, NISAR is expected to revolutionise earth-observing capability.
• Among other things, it is also expected to be a reliable data source for disaster monitoring and mitigation.
• This single observatory solution is equipped with a long wavelength band (L-Band) SAR payload system provided by NASA and a short wavelength band (S-Band) ISRO payload.
• Operating together, they will supply, according to ISRO, “spatially and temporally consistent data
  • For understanding changes in earth’s ecosystems, ice mass, vegetation biomass, sea level rise, groundwater and natural hazards, including earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides.”
• For those disasters that evolve over slightly longer periods of time

Prelims Takeaway

• NASA
• L-Band