NASA-ISRO Launch Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) in 2024

As per NASA officials, the launch of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) is scheduled for the first quarter of 2024 after undergoing initial tests, with a focus on vibration-related assessments.

Phil Barela, the NASA NISAR Project Manager, mentioned during a media briefing, "ISRO is projecting the first quarter of next year. So, I mean, that is ready."

The NISAR mission, a collaborative effort between NASA and ISRO, aims to monitor Earth evolving ecosystems, dynamic surfaces, and ice masses. It will offer valuable insights into biomass, natural hazards, sea level rise, groundwater, and various other applications.

NISAR is designed to observe the Earth land and ice-covered surfaces globally with a regularity of every 12 days on ascending and descending passes. This means it will capture data on average every 6 days throughout its baseline 3-year mission.

In this partnership, NASA contributions include the mission L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), a high-rate telecommunication subsystem for scientific data GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and a payload data subsystem. On the other hand, ISRO will provide the satellite bus, an S-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), the launch vehicle, and associated launch services. The collaboration is poised to enhance our understanding of Earth various facets through advanced remote sensing capabilities.