NASA-ISRO Mission Aces Checkouts, on Track to Start Delivering Science

The NISAR satellite has passed all checks to ensure that its systems, including its two radars, are functioning properly. The mission team commanded the spacecraft to start rising into its operational orbit on Aug. 26.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

After launching July 30, the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) Earth-observing radar satellite mission, a joint effort between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), is on schedule to start science operations this fall.

Following the deployment of its 39-foot (12-meter) radar antenna reflector on Aug. 15, engineers powered on the satellite’s L-band and S-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems, which, together, will track movement of Earth’s ice and land surfaces in unprecedented detail.

In addition, the spacecraft, including the radar payload, has passed all of the preliminary checks performed by NASA and ISRO mission teams to ensure they are operating normally. The mission began raising the satellite to its operational orbit, 464 miles (747 kilometers, mean altitude), on Aug. 26.

The mission team anticipates having science-quality radar images in the coming weeks. Full science operations have been scheduled to begin about 90 days after launch.

The NISAR mission is the first to carry two SAR systems. The L-band radar transmits and receives signals at a 10-inch (24-centimeter) wavelength, enabling it to penetrate forest canopies and measure soil moisture, forest biomass, and the motion of land and ice surfaces. The S-band radar, which uses a 4-inch (10-centimeter) wavelength, is more sensitive to small vegetation and observing certain types of agriculture, grassland ecosystems, and moisture in snow. Both systems can collect data through clouds and precipitation, day and night.

The satellite will monitor most of Earth’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days, tracking changes in the planet’s forests, frozen surfaces, major infrastructure, and crust down to fractions of an inch. The lattermost is a key measurement in understanding how the land surface moves before, during, and after earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and landslides.

More About NISAR

The NISAR mission is a partnership between NASA and ISRO spanning years of technical and programmatic collaboration. The successful launch and deployment of NISAR builds upon a strong heritage of cooperation between the United States and India in space. The data produced by NISAR’s two radar systems, one provided by NASA and one by ISRO, will be a testament to what can be achieved when countries unite around a shared vision of innovation and discovery.

The ISRO Space Applications Centre provided the mission’s S-band SAR. The U R Rao Satellite Centre provided the spacecraft bus. Launch services were through Satish Dhawan Space Centre. After launch, key operations, including boom and radar antenna reflector deployment, are being executed and monitored by the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network’s global system of ground stations.

Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California leads the U.S. component of the project. In addition to the L-band SAR, reflector, and boom, JPL also provided the high-rate communication subsystem for science data, a solid-state data recorder, and payload data subsystem. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the Near Space Network, which receives NISAR’s L-band data.

To learn more about NISAR, visit: https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov/ 

Source: NASA-ISRO Mission Aces Checkouts, on Track to Start Delivering Science - NASA Science