Ready with NISAR payload integration: Nasa officials

NISAR is aimed at making global measurements of the causes and consequences of land surface changes using advanced radar imaging

Eight years after striking a deal with the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) on Wednesday is ready with the payload integration of the NASA-Isro Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, gearing up for a 2023 launch.

NISAR, a joint earth-observing mission between Nasa and Isro, is aimed at making global measurements of the causes and consequences of land surface changes using advanced radar imaging.

The payload integration, completed in the United States, is to be shipped to India during the later part of this year. This will then be integrated with the satellite and the launch vehicles, a top Nasa official told a gathering of researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) here.

The mission had faced Covid-related delays, but now much progress has been made, Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator, NASA science mission directorate on future space exploration, said. The mission, he said, is extremely complex.

Nasa officials, he informed, have already met the Isro Scientific Secretary. The team was expected to continue the discussions later.

The partnership was in response to the National Academy of Science’s 2007 survey of earth’s observational priorities for the next decade, known as the decadal survey.

One of the top priorities identified in this survey was to gain data and insight in three earth science domains: ecosystems, deformation of earth’s crust and cryospheric sciences. The mission will measure earth’s changing ecosystems, dynamic surfaces, and ice masses providing information about biomass, natural hazards, sea-level rise, and groundwater.

In her presentation, Karen M St Germain, earth science division director, Nasa, said the payload integration was complete at JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab). “We are going into testing. First, the launch integration tests and then the functional tests, after which the whole thing will be shifted back to India for integration with the satellite and for integration with the launch vehicle.” The Indian and American space agencies, she said, had also jointly built an air-borne test bed for the radars.

Calling space as incredible marketplace, Zurbuchen said it was fuelled by incredible investment that has the potential to touch close to a trillion dollars. “The space industry will go up by a factor of three. Nasa is driven by 30% tech and 70% team,” he said.