The historic NISAR mission, a landmark collaboration between NASA and ISRO, has entered its essential 90-day commissioning phase, throughout which scientists will perform rigorous checks, calibrations and orbital changes to organize the satellite tv for pc for full-scale earth remark.
The critical phase follows the profitable launch of the radar imaging satellite tv for pc on July 30 aboard a GSLV-F16 rocket from Srikharikota in Andhra Pradesh.
Speaking to PTI, Gerald W Bawden, Program Manager for Natural Hazards Research at NASA’s Earth Sciences Division, outlined the important thing actions underway.
“NISAR is inserted at an altitude of 737 km and we need to actually rise up to 747 km and it will take about 45-50 days for those operations to take place,” he defined.
After the commissioning is full, he stated the radars will probably be activated and it’ll begin gathering information over “all ice, all land, all the time” from the Earth.
“The resolution will be 5 metres by 5 metres and we will be imaging that every 12 days. So it is a lot of data. It is more data that NASA has collected in any other mission.” On the important thing classes from the collaboration with the Bengaluru-based area company for the NISAR mission, the scientist stated, NASA realized from the ISRO’s give attention to how science may help society, whereas ISRO gained from NASA’s deep give attention to scientific analysis.
Bawden stated the undertaking introduced collectively scientists from two international locations on reverse sides of the world, with a 12.5-hour time distinction.
“… we had culture differences and the other thing is that we are on the opposite side of the world. We have to work together and we have the common love for technology.”
“The two scientists (of ISRO and NASA) are building partnerships by working together, friendships. This NISAR partnership is more than building an amazing satellite, it is teams that are together to solve bigger problems,” he famous.
Responding to a question on the alternatives the collaboration with ISRO affords for NASA, NASA Earth Sciences Division Program Executive Sanghamitra B Dutta stated, “This is the first large earth observing misison that India and the United States have put together. India is also working on this human space flight. So there are collaborations between the US and India on this over the last 4-5 years.”
“An Indian astronaut (Subhanshu Shukla) recently went to the International Space Station that has also been built as part of a collaboration between the US and India. We are enormously proud to work with each other and it will come in future in the commercial area, space collaboration and technology development, science area,” she stated.
Regarding the mission’s dual-band radar, Dutta stated radar missions have occurred up to now.
“But simultaneous observation (of the Earth) in two different frequencies by two different radars flying together did not happen before. Scientists need not confine to the boundary of a country and they always discuss possibilities of new missions and bigger and better science,” she stated.
During discussions, Dutta stated scientists from ISRO and NASA got here up with the concept to fly two Radars directly, utilizing two totally different frequencies to gather extra information in several technical methods.
“The idea was first discussed between Space Applications Centre, ISRO Ahmedabad and scientists from Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA. They discussed, brainstormed and came up with the idea of two radars working simultaneously.” Supporting Dutta’s assertion, Bawden stated there are main advantages of getting two frequencies.
“We have technology challenge, and at the end of the day, we are building the technology to address scientific questions and NASA has the long L Band while ISRO has S band. It is fantastic to study agriculture like how corn grows, soya beans grow.”
