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How US-India’s NISAR satellite will track Earth
NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) will allow scientists to observe everything from land deformation caused by earthquakes, landslides, and volcanoes to the effects of climate change on glaciers, ice sheets, and forests.
NISAR Project Scientist Paul Rosen of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory first traveled to India in late 2011 to discuss collaboration with ISRO scientists on an Earth-observing radar mission. NASA and ISRO signed an agreement in 2014 to develop NISAR. / NASA
The upcoming U.S.-India NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission, set to launch from India, is poised to offer unprecedented insights into the Earth's constantly changing surface, due to its groundbreaking dual-band radar technology.
An equal collaboration between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), NISAR will allow scientists to track everything from land deformation caused by earthquakes, landslides, and volcanoes to the effects of climate change on glaciers, ice sheets, and forests.
This mission is unique in its ability to provide detailed data on Earth’s ecosystems, the cryosphere, and the solid Earth, offering key insights into the global carbon cycle, natural disasters, and more.
Paul Rosen, NISAR's project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has been involved in the project since its inception. He recalls his first visit to India in late 2011, where discussions began with ISRO scientists on collaborating for a radar mission to observe Earth. "We proposed the idea of a dual-band satellite, and in 2014, NASA and ISRO signed an agreement to make NISAR a reality," Rosen shared. The journey to launch has been a global effort, with hardware built across different continents before being assembled in India.
One of NISAR’s most remarkable features is its use of two radar systems: the L-band with a 10-inch wavelength and the S-band with a 4-inch wavelength. These wavelengths react differently to various Earth features, with shorter wavelengths more sensitive to smaller objects like leaves and rough surfaces, while longer wavelengths interact more with larger structures like tree trunks and boulders. This dual-band technology allows researchers to study a broader range of Earth's features with greater precision. "By using both radar systems, we’ll be able to observe the same features with different wavelengths, which gives us a more comprehensive understanding," Rosen explained.
Though the technology behind synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has existed since NASA’s Seasat mission in the 1970s, NISAR’s scale and capabilities are unprecedented. "Seasat was the first mission to provide radar images of Earth from space, and it inspired me to join JPL in 1981," Rosen noted, reflecting on the origins of radar Earth observation. NISAR will follow in Seasat’s footsteps but with advancements that allow for more detailed, frequent measurements. The mission will capture images every week, with each pixel representing an area the size of half a tennis court, enabling scientists to monitor Earth’s surfaces at a resolution of just a few centimeters.
The NISAR data will be vital not only for scientific research but also for practical applications, such as monitoring soil moisture and water resources. NASA is making the data freely accessible by processing and storing it in the cloud, ensuring that users across the world can access it for a variety of purposes, from disaster response to environmental monitoring.
The collaboration between NASA and ISRO has also been a significant achievement in itself. The partnership marks the first time the two agencies have worked together on hardware development for an Earth-observing mission. Rosen described the collaboration as spanning over 9,000 miles and 13 time zones, with teams working across different continents. "It’s been a long journey, both literally and figuratively," he said, noting the complexity of assembling the satellite and its instruments across various locations.
The mission’s success would not have been possible without this international cooperation, with ISRO’s Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad providing the S-band radar instrument and ISRO’s U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru contributing the spacecraft bus, while NASA provided the L-band radar system.
As the launch date approaches, the NISAR mission is expected to offer a new window into Earth’s processes, making it a powerful tool for scientists and researchers around the world.
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