Sriharikota, India, July 30: The countdown has begun for the launch of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite, a flagship joint Earth-observation mission between the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The 2,392-kg satellite is set to lift off aboard the GSLV-F16 rocket from the second launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at 5:40 p.m. local time on Wednesday.
Roughly 19 minutes after takeoff, the satellite will be placed in a 743-km sun-synchronous orbit. Once operational, NISAR will provide high-resolution radar imagery of Earth every 12 days, regardless of weather or lighting conditions, aiding in disaster response, environmental monitoring, and climate change research.
NASA officials hailed the mission as a milestone in international scientific cooperation. “Building a satellite on opposite sides of the world during a global pandemic was really hard, but it strengthened our relationship with ISRO,” said Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division.
India’s space agency was responsible for the spacecraft bus, S-band radar, and the launch itself, while NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory provided the L-band radar, radar reflector, high-speed communications equipment, and other payload systems.
The decade-long collaboration involved extensive personnel exchanges between the two agencies. During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 65 ISRO engineers traveled to JPL for integration and testing. NASA, in turn, deployed more than 175 engineers to India to continue work on the satellite.
Phil Barela, project manager for NISAR at JPL, described the mission as “a phenomenal journey” of mutual learning. “I’m anticipating a lot of very happy people, not only in the U.S., but also in India,” he said. The NISAR launch underscores growing U.S.-India cooperation in space science and is expected to lay the groundwork for future joint missions in Earth and planetary observation.
