NISAR: Tracking Earth’s Changes From Space (Mission Overview)

NASA and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) have teamed up to create a powerful new space mission that will track our changing Earth in fine detail. The satellite, called NISAR, will use an advanced radar system to deepen our understanding of deforestation, shrinking glaciers and sea ice loss, natural hazards, climate change, and other global vital signs. Short for NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, NISAR features two radar instruments: one from ISRO, and one built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Peering through cloud cover and vegetation, the satellite will bounce radar signals off nearly all the planet’s land and ice twice every 12 days, monitoring motions of the surface down to fractions of an inch along with changes in other characteristics. NISAR is undergoing final integration and testing at ISRO’s satellite facility in Bengaluru, India, and will launch from ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India. Launch is expected in early 2024; the specific date will be announced by ISRO. For more information on the NISAR mission, visit: https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov/. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ISRO

What is said in the film

With NISAR, we're tracking the changes of the solid Earth and how it's moving. Ecosystems, ice cover and any other thing that's changing at the scale of a centimeter on the earth in a way that we've never been able to see before Because of these very subtle motions we can measure, we're able to understand what's happening below the surface of the Earth at great precision. We can see subsidence, and that allows us then to manage resources of what's happening below the earth. Scientists want to study the movements of the Earth's surface to understand the processes that could trigger earthquakes, volcanoes and landslides. And that allows us then to understand the risks associated with natural hazards.

Which in turn can help in mitigation measures and early response. Other changes of the Earth's surface include melting of glaciers and ice sheets, changes in forest, biomass, soil moisture and shoreline changes. It's based on radar, so it has two different frequency radars and it basically looks through clouds and sees the surface of the earth. What you're seeing is an animation of how the radar collects data. And you can see these beams coming down from the antenna and coming back.

And on the ground you can see a swath and that's where it collects the data. And when it combines them all together, you get what we need for the science. We can see day and night through clouds. And we're covering all of the land and all of the ice covered surfaces of Earth every week. NISAR is quite unique in that it has two radars, one provided by NASA, one provided by ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organisation.

NASA and ISRO have collaborated in this mission. The last year we were there at the JPL, NASA there, the radars got integrated and tested and was shipped back to India. And now the spacecraft is getting integrated with the instrument and they're being tested together NISAR is going to be launched from Sriharikota, which is a ISRO launch pad, and it is going to be launched by a GSLV Mark II, so we're just looking forward for the launch of NISAR in the forthcoming year. NISAR is measuring the changes on the Earth's surface, which are either factors or indicators of climate change. The society will also immensely benefit due to its contribution towards disaster management and providing food and water security.

These things are global problems that the global community needs to come together to resolve. Now it looks like we are no more belonging to two different worlds and we all belong to the space community, that’s it. There's the excitement about what we are going to learn that we didn't even anticipate. We're going to learn.

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