New Delhi: NASA’s C-130 Hercules Cargo Aircraft has successfully delivered the NISAR antenna reflector to Bengaluru after flying half-way across the world. The C-130 took off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on 15 October, to pick up the antenna reflector from the March Air Reserve Base located in Riverside County in California. The aircraft then flew to the Hickman Air Force Base in Hawaii, the Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, and the Clark Air Base in the Philippines before flying to the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Airport in Bengaluru, India. The reflector antenna was then transported to the UR Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru, ISRO’s satellite integration facility.
The drum-shaped antenna measures 12 metres across, and will be the largest such antenna when deployed in space. The antenna will allow the pair of radar payloads on board to monitor the surface of the Earth once every 12 days. Out of carefully examining the conditions that the satellite is expected to be exposed to, NASA decided to apply a precautionary thermal coating on the antenna out of an abundance of caution. Engineers at NASA applied reflective tape and took other measures to ensure that the reflector antenna would deploy as expected in Earth orbit. This work was completed just a few days before the Hercules C-130 departed.
A satellite to monitor the health of the planet
NISAR stands for NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite, which is the first of its kind collaboration between NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and ISRO’s Space Applications Centre. The satellite has a pair of radar payloads on board that will be able to track the movements of ice sheets, ground water levels, and the health of the vegetation in entire forests. The satellite will also be able to peer through the clouds, and is expected to gather valuable information on the health of the planet.
