The prestigious eagerly-awaited launch of NISAR mission, a Indo-US joint collaboration between NASA and ISRO, is likely to take place by the end of this month.
Both the space agencies have discussed about NISAR’s readiness for launch and potential opportunities for future cooperation including professional exchange in technical areas and space exploration.
NASA and ISRO are collaborating on one of NASA’s biggest project–the NASA-ISRO SAR Mission (NISAR), a joint Earth-observing mission.
NISAR will be launch from the Second Launch Pad from the Satish Dhawan Space Center, SHAR
Range in Sriharikota, into a near-polar orbit at an altitude of 747 km with an inclination of 98.4 deg.
ISRO will be using its heaviest home grown rocket GSLV-MkII/LMV for the mission.
Though sources said the mission is likely on July 30 or 31, the exact date was expected to be
announced on July 21.
According to sources in US Consulate General in Chennai NASA will host a news conference
at 12 p.m. EDT (9:30 p.m. IST) on July 21, to discuss the upcoming NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic
Aperture Radar) mission during which more details about the mission will be known.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California will stream the briefing.
The NISAR Mission will measure Earth’s changing ecosystems, dynamic surfaces and ice
masses providing information about biomass, natural hazards, sea level rise and groundwater
and will support a host of other applications.
NISAR will observe Earth’s land and ice-covered surfaces globally with 12-day regularity on
ascending and descending passes, sampling Earth on average every 6 days for a baseline
3-year mission.
NISAR will map global land biomass, the amount of organic material from plants, every 12 days.
