New Delhi: A NASA cargo plane is taking a multi-leg journey towards the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited Airport in Bengaluru. On board is the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Radar (NISAR) Satellite, a much-delayed mission that employs sweeps to overcome the bottleneck of range and resolution. Originally the USA approached India with a parasitic proposition on using an Indian launch vehicle to launch the new tech developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). No one denies an opportunity to work with JPL, but ISRO insisted on working on the mission as partners.
Illustration of the NISAR satellite. (Image Credit: NASA).
JPL dispatched NISAR to the UR Rao Satellite Centre ahead of a planned launch last year, but then retrieved it to apply a precautionary thermal coating on more careful evaluation of the thermal conditions that the spacecraft was likely to be exposed to, and is now sending it back after applying the said thermal coating. This is a critical mission to monitor the health of the planet, and NASA is making sure no stone is unturned in making it work. NASA’s JPL and ISRO’s Space Applications Centre (SAC) are both providing laser payloads for the NISAR mission, which will be able to track forests, ice sheets and ground water levels.
NISAR will give the planet a health checkup
NISAR is equipped with complementary radar payloads that can cover the entire surface of the planet in 12 days, and actually six days for many practical applications. The satellite is sensitive enough to determine ground water levels based on precise deformations of the crust of the Earth. This same capability can be used to evaluate carbon storage in biomass, and the dynamics of the entire cryosphere, that is all frozen stuff on Earth. ISRO and NASA are aiming to launch the NISAR mission next year.
