SCIENCE

Space
NISAR satellite
▪ First satellite jointly developed by the ISRO and NASA.
▪ NISAR, which has a mission life of five years, will observe Earth with a swathe of 242 km and
high spatial resolution
▪ Key applications Include: sea ice classification, ship detection, shoreline monitoring, storm
characterisation, changes in soil moisture, mapping and monitoring of surface water resources,
and disaster response.
▪ It is the first satellite to observe the earth with a dual-frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) — NASA’s L-band and ISRO’s S-band.
▪ Both using NASA’s 12-metre unfurlable mesh reflector antenna, integrated with ISRO’s modified I3K satellite bus.
▪ This is the first time that a GSLV has put a satellite in a sun-synchronous polar orbit.
▪ The radars will allow NISAR to monitor both surface and subsurface changes through clouds,
smoke and vegetation dynamics.
▪ Its scan-on-receive method will give a spatial resolution of 3-10 metres and centimetre-scale
vertical mapping.
▪ NASA (JPL): Built the L-band SAR, radar antenna reflector and boom, and engineering payload.
▪ ISRO: Developed the S-band SAR, spacecraft bus, solar array, and the launch vehicle.