NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite to be launched on July 30: ISRO

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)-Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR), the first joint satellite of the Indian and U.S. space agencies, will be launched by Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) on July 30 at 5.40 p.m. from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

The GSLV-F16 rocket will inject the NISAR satellite into a 743 km Sun-synchronous orbit with an inclination of 98.40 degrees.

The NISAR satellite, weighing 2,392 kg, is a unique Earth observation satellite, and the first satellite to observe the Earth with a dual frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) — NASA’s L-band and ISRO’s S-band — both using NASA’s 12m unfurlable mesh reflector antenna, integrated to ISRO’s modified I3K satellite bus, according to ISRO.

NISAR will observe Earth with a swathe of 242 km and high spatial resolution, using SweepSAR technology for the first time.

“The satellite will scan the entire globe and provide all weather, day and night data at 12-day intervals, and enable a wide range of applications. NISAR can detect even small changes in the Earth’s surface, such as ground deformation, ice sheet movement, and vegetation dynamics. Further applications include sea ice classification, ship detection, shoreline monitoring, storm characterization, changes in soil moisture, mapping and monitoring of surface water resources, and disaster response,” the ISRO stated.

It further added that the NISAR launch is the result of strong technical cooperation between ISRO and the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory technical teams for more than a decade.

Multiple ISRO centres have contributed to NISAR, including the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad, which is providing the mission’s S-band SAR, and the U.R. Rao Satellite Centre, which is providing the spacecraft bus.