India Launches NISAR Earth Observation Satellite

Syllabus: GS3/ Science and Technology

Context

• The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.

NISAR Satellite

• NISAR is an Earth-observation satellite that stands for NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar.
• It is Jointly developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Indian Space Research Organisation under a partnership agreement signed in 2014.
• It will be launched into a polar Sun-synchronous dawn-dusk orbit at 747 km altitude and an inclination of 98.4º.
• NISAR is the first satellite mission to collect radar data in two microwave bandwidth regions, called the L-band and the S-band.
  • The S-band payload has been made by the ISRO and the L-band payload by the U.S. 

Monitoring of Earth Surface

• The NISAR system comprises a dual frequency, fully polarimetric radar, with an imaging swath greater than 150 miles (240 km). 
• This design permits complete global coverage every 12-days, allowing researchers to create time-series interferometric imagery and systematically map the changing surface of Earth.
  • It can monitor various aspects in very high resolution.
• After a 90-day commissioning period, the mission will conduct a minimum of three full years of science operations with the L-band radar to satisfy NASA’s requirements,
  • ISRO requires five years of operations with the S-band radar.

Source: TH