January 21, 2024 09:19 pm | Updated January 23, 2024 10:32 am IST – THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
Project Scientist for NISAR at JPL Paul A. Rosen. File
The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, designed to watch pure processes and modifications in earth’s advanced ecosystems, is on track for an “early 2024” launch, a senior official at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) mentioned on Sunday.
The remaining checks on the joint NASA-ISRO earth-observing mission are scheduled for this week, Paul A. Rosen, Project Scientist for NISAR at JPL, advised The Hindu. “As we speak, everything except the acoustic tests has been completed. The vibration test was completed yesterday [Saturday]. Final tests are planned this week. We are on track,” Dr. Rosen mentioned.
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Dr. Rosen and several other of his NASA-JPL colleagues related to NISAR are scheduled to talk on the Global Science Festival Kerala (GSFK), beneath manner at Thonnakkal right here on Monday.
‘Enormous data’
Designed as a low earth orbit (LEO) observatory, the NISAR mission is exclusive in a number of respects, not least the large quantity of dependable, excessive decision information anticipated from it over a three-year mission life. “The volume of data will be enormous, and it helps us to have a reliable set of measurements over any spot on the earth where we want to do science or monitoring applications, forest management, agriculture monitoring or even just looking at an approaching hurricane,” Dr. Rosen mentioned.
The open science and open information coverage makes the mission distinctive in its scope, he mentioned. “The data will be placed on our respective data servers in India and the U.S. and they will be made open to the public essentially as soon as they are processed to a validated data product. For many SAR (synthetic aperture radar) missions, this is simply not the case,” he mentioned.
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The mission will use an artificial aperture radar to scan earth’s land and ice-covered areas twice each 12 days in ascending and descending passes. Capable of penetrating cloud cowl and working day and night time, NISAR is predicted to revolutionise earth-observing functionality.
Among different issues, additionally it is anticipated to be a dependable information supply for catastrophe monitoring and mitigation.
This single observatory resolution is provided with a protracted wavelength band (L-Band) SAR payload system supplied by NASA and a brief wavelength band (S-Band) ISRO payload. Operating collectively, they’ll provide, based on ISRO, “spatially and temporally consistent data for understanding changes in earth’s ecosystems, ice mass, vegetation biomass, sea level rise, groundwater and natural hazards, including earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides.”
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“For those disasters that evolve over slightly longer periods of time or where you can actually plan an observation, like a hurricane approaching, for those things, you have a reliable data source,” Dr. Rosen mentioned.
Dr. Rosen feels that NASA and ISRO are all for taking their collaboration in house ahead. “Both sides I think are extremely eager to find ways to collaborate on earth science, planetary science and human space (programmes). There is a very, very strong interest,” he mentioned.
Dr. Rosen will converse on ‘NISAR – An International Radar System of Systems for Groundbreaking Earth Science’ on the GSFK on Monday.
- The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, designed to watch pure processes and modifications in earth’s advanced ecosystems, is on track for an “early 2024” launch.
- The remaining checks on the joint NASA-ISRO earth-observing mission are scheduled for this week, Paul A. Rosen, Project Scientist for NISAR at JPL, mentioned.
- Designed as a low earth orbit (LEO) observatory, the NISAR mission is exclusive in a number of respects, not least the large quantity of dependable, excessive decision information anticipated from it over a three-year mission life.
