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Scheduled to launch in early 2024, NISAR is a joint mission by NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) aimed at scanning nearly all of Earth’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. This mission will provide valuable insights into two crucial ecosystems – forests and wetlands – and their interactions with climate change and the global carbon cycle.

NISAR will utilize a sophisticated radar system to systematically map Earth. It will employ two different radar frequencies, L-band and S-band, to measure small-scale changes on the Earth’s surface with great precision, even capturing movements as small as a centimeter.

NASA’s contribution to the mission includes the L-band radar, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and a payload data subsystem. On the other hand, ISRO is responsible for providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band radar, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services.

The radar technology employed by NISAR will offer a comprehensive view of Earth’s land and ice, enabling researchers to observe and understand the dynamic nature of these ecosystems. Paul Rosen, the NISAR project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, emphasizes the significance of this technology in monitoring the changes occurring on Earth’s surface.

This mission is particularly notable as it represents the first collaboration between NASA and ISRO in developing hardware for an Earth-observing mission. The joint efforts of these two space agencies will greatly enhance our understanding of the planet’s ecosystems and their response to global changes.

The launch of NISAR in 2024 will mark a major milestone in the study of Earth’s ecosystems, providing researchers with crucial data to address pressing environmental challenges and promote sustainable management of natural resources.

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