NISAR

About:

• NISAR is an SUV-sized satellite that is being jointly developed by the space agencies of the US and India.
  
  
• The name NISAR is short for NASA-ISRO-SAR. SAR here refers to the synthetic aperture radar that NASA will use to measure changes in the surface of the Earth.
  • Essentially, SAR refers to a technique for producing high-resolution images.
    
    
  • Because of the precision, the radar can penetrate clouds and darkness, which means that it can collect data day and night in any weather.
    
    
  
  
  
• The partnership agreement was signed between NASA and ISRO in 2014.
  • NASA will provide one of the radars for the satellite, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers and a payload data subsystem.
    
    
  • ISRO, on the other hand, will provide the spacecraft bus, the second type of radar (called the S-band radar), the launch vehicle and associated launch services.
    
    
  
  
  
• The satellite will be launched in 2022 from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India, into a near-polar orbit.
  
  
• It will scan the globe every 12 days over the course of its three-year mission of imaging the Earth’s land, ice sheets and sea ice to give an “unprecedented” view of the planet.