Dr. Laurie LeshinNASA’s JPL director meets ISRO Chief, discusses about proposed Indo-US Joint NISAR mission, Director of Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), USA visited ISRO and
discussed with ISRO Chief Dr.S.Somanath about the readiness of the Indo-US Joint
satellite NISAR mission.
The mission is likely to take place in the first quarter of next year.
During the meeting held at ISRO headquarters in Bengaluru, Dr. Laurie Leshin expressed
happiness over the joint efforts of JPL and ISRO officials working together as a single team
at ISRO’s U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) in realising ‘NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture
Radar (NISAR).
NISAR’s readiness for launch and potential opportunities for future cooperation including
professional exchange in technical areas and space exploration were also discussed,
ISRO said.
It may be noted that NASA and ISRO are collaborating on one of NASA’s biggest project–
the NASA-ISRO SAR Mission (NISAR), a joint Earth-observing mission.
NISAR is planned for launch in early 2024 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 which
will take place from the Second Launch Pad, according to information in the NASA website
on the NISAR mission.
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.
