"Historic Moment": ISRO's Nilesh Desai Ahead Of NISAR Satellite Launch Today

As the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite is set to launch on Wednesday aboard India's GSLV-F16 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Nilesh M Desai, ISRO's Director of Space Applications Centre, termed the mission "a classic example of collaborative effort between two great democratic countries."

"This is a historic moment for both ISRO as well as NASA because it is a joint collaborative project and considered to be one of the costliest missions ever... It is a classic example of collaborative effort between two great democratic countries - India and the United States of America and as well as a collaboration between NASA and ISRO," Mr Desai told ANI.

He said that it is a unique type of radar system because it has a lot of applications, especially related to land deformation studies, ecosystem structures, disaster management, as well as environment monitoring, and oceanography.

"Studies will also be carried out using the data available from these two synthetic aperture radars, especially in interferometric mode, and there is a lot of excitement among all the scientists of the whole world because it is a science mission," he said.

According to the ISRO, the liftoff will take place at 5.40 pm today.

NISAR satellite will scan the entire globe every 12 days, providing high-resolution, day-and-night, all-weather imagery across a 242 km swath. NISAR aims to support climate change research, disaster response, and Earth science studies, ISRO said.

NISAR features NASA's L-band and ISRO's S-band radar, enabling it to track surface changes with centimetre-level precision.

The satellite will systematically map Earth's surface, monitoring dynamic processes like glacier retreat, vegetation changes, and earthquakes. NISAR will deliver high-resolution data crucial for monitoring natural disasters, environmental degradation, and infrastructure stress.

The unique dual-band Synthetic Aperture Radar of NISAR employs an advanced, novel SweepSAR technique, which provides high resolution and large swath imagery. NISAR will image the global land and ice-covered surfaces, including islands, sea-ice, and selected oceans every 12 days.

NISAR mission's primary objectives are to study land & ice deformation, land ecosystems, and oceanic regions in areas of common interest to the US and Indian science communities.

The Spacecraft is built around ISRO's I-3K Structure. It carries two major Payloads, viz., L & S-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). The S-band Radar system, data handling & high-speed downlink system, the spacecraft, and the launch system are developed by ISRO.

The L-band Radar system, high speed downlink system, the Solid-State Recorder, the GPS receiver, and the 9m Boom hoisting the 12m reflector are delivered by NASA. Further, ISRO takes care of the satellite commanding and operations, and NASA will provide the orbit manoeuvre plan and RADAR operations plan. NISAR mission will be aided with ground station support of both ISRO and NASA for downloading of the acquired images, which, after the necessary processing, will be disseminated to the user community, the ISRO said

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