NASA, ISRO to Launch Joint Space Mission in 2024 to Map the Globe

Bengaluru: The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) will be launched in the first quarter of 2024, informed NASA NISAR Project Manager Phil Barela during a media interaction in Bengaluru on Wednesday.

According to him, NISAR will be launched into space from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota aboard the ISRO Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark-II.

This three-year-long space mission will survey all of Earth’s land and ice-covered surfaces every 12 days. This will start after a 90-day satellite commissioning period.

Regarding the key tests that are pending before the launch, Barela said, “The vibration testing that’s underway, but there’s a whole slew of performance tests that we need to do.”

Battery and simulation tests have to be done to make sure that the system works fine, he said.

“We’ll be doing performance testing on the radars and various spacecraft electronics. So, a lot of testing remains but the big environments test, the only one remaining now, is vibration,” Barela said.

The SUV-size satellite of this joint project has a mass of roughly 2,800 kg. It will be powered by two solar arrays providing about four kilowatts of power.