Radar system reaches Bangalore for joint NASA-ISRO mission | Latest news India

Two radar systems in the first collaboration between the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) on Earth-observation missions have arrived in Bengaluru ahead of the 2024 mission launch.

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission will measure Earth’s changing ecosystems, dynamic surfaces and ice masses, providing information on biomass, natural hazards, sea level rise and groundwater. The mission is expected to support several other applications.

The science payloads of two radar systems, one built by NASA and the other by ISRO, were flown by a US Air Force C-17 heavy lift aircraft from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California to ISRO’s UR Rao Satellite Centre. Bangalore on March 6.

NISAR’s most advanced radar system will be launched on NASA science missions. Teams at the facility in Bengaluru will assemble the radar systems with the satellite’s body and run it through tests ahead of its three-year mission, JPL said in a statement.

The satellite will observe nearly all of Earth’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days, measuring movements in extremely fine detail. It will survey forests and agricultural areas to help scientists understand the exchange of carbon between plants and the atmosphere.

NISAR’s payload will carry the largest radar antenna of its kind – a drum-shaped, wire mesh reflector about 40 feet in diameter that will extend from a 30-foot boom.

The mission’s science instruments consist of L- and S-band radars. ISRO developed the S-band radar, which it sent to JPL in March 2021. US engineers have spent the past two years integrating the instrument with the JPL-built L-band system and then conducting tests to verify that both systems work together.

In late February, JPL’s technicians and engineers finalized the science payload for shipment to Bangalore. The satellite will be launched on ISRO’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark II rocket, which will lift off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center and deliver NISAR to a near-polar Earth orbit in 2024.

Once operational, NISAR will collect measurements day and night under all weather conditions, and its data will help researchers understand a wide range of Earth science topics, including landslides, groundwater loss and the carbon cycle.

NASA is providing the radar reflector antenna, deployable boom, a high-rate communications subsystem for science data, the GPS receiver, a solid-state recorder, and the payload data subsystem. ISRO is providing satellites, S-band radars, launch vehicles and associated launch services and satellite mission operations.