NASA-ISRO satellite NISAR launch on July 30

The NASA-ISRO joint satellite NISAR will be launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, on July 30 at 5.40 pm, the space agency said on Monday.

According to ISRO, GSLV-F16 will inject the Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite into a 743 km Sun-synchronous orbit with an inclination of 98.4 degrees.

NISAR will observe Earth with a swath of 242 km and high spatial resolution, using SweepSAR technology for the first time, ISRO said in a release.


The satellite will scan the entire globe and provide all weather, day and night data at 12-day interval and enable a wide range of applications, it added.

NISAR can detect even small changes in the Earth's surface such as ground deformation, ice sheet movement and vegetation dynamics, according to the space agency.

Further applications include sea ice classification, ship detection, shoreline monitoring, storm characterisation, changes in soil moisture, mapping and monitoring of surface water resources and disaster response.

NISAR, 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 (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.

The NISAR launch is the result of strong technical cooperation between ISRO & NASA/JPL technical teams for more than a decade, the release said.