India launched yesterday a $1.5 billion, first-of-its-kind radar imaging satellite built in collaboration with Nasa, deploying it to help enhance global monitoring of climate change and natural disasters.
The Nasa-Isro Synthetic Aperture Radar, or NISAR satellite, is the first such collaboration between the Indian Space Research Organisation and US space agency Nasa.
It took off from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre at 1210 GMT atop a medium-lift rocket, marking a milestone in space co-operation and bolstering India’s profile in low-cost, high-impact satellite missions.
NISAR is the world’s first radar imaging satellite to use two radar frequencies – the L-band provided by Nasa and the S-band developed by Isro – to track minute changes in the Earth’s surface, including movements as small as a centimetre, the space agencies have said.
The satellite, roughly the size and weight of a fully loaded pickup truck – was placed into a near-polar Sun-synchronous orbit approximately 747km above Earth.
It will map the planet every 12 days using a 240km-wide radar swath, offering data to scientists and disaster response agencies to monitor everything from glacier retreat in the Himalayas to potential landslide zones in South America.
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