The Nasa-Isro Sar Mission Leading up to Launch

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) Mission experienced some technical issues in observatory level testing that required mitigations to be carried out on the reflector system, preventing a launch in 2024 as previously planned. The reflector has been reconditioned to address these issues, and NISAR is now on target for launch in early 2025. After launch, the spacecraft is planned to undergo commissioning for period of 90 days, after which science operations will begin. NISAR has two radar instruments - an L-band (24 cm wavelength) radar provided by NASA, and an S-band $(9.4 \mathrm{~cm}$ wavelength) radar provided by ISRO - each of which can be operated individually or simultaneously. Each radar has a swath width of greater than 240 km for all modes at a variety of resolutions and polarimetric states. Due to precise orbit control and pointing, each radar also will produce repeat-pass interferometric measurements over all science targets. During the science phase, NISAR will collect about 35 Terabits of L-band radar image data each day, observing all land and ice-covered surfaces of Earth on the ascending and descending portions of each orbit every 12 days, and collecting about 5 Terabits of S-band radar image data each day over India and surrounding areas, Antarctica, and distributed global scientific areas of interest. Nearly all S- band acquisitions are collected simultaneously with L-band acquisitions, creating a unique globally distributed time- series data set. The commissioning plan calls for early engineering mode acquisitions around one month after launch, some of which may be usable to form images, followed by a period of orbit adjustment and system timing and pointing calibration. To prepare for science operations, the NISAR project has worked with the science team to develop a list of observational areas where early data can be acquired to demonstrate the preliminary quality of the data and to illustrate the science themes NISAR is addressing: solid Earth sciences, ecosystems sciences including global soil moisture, and cryosphere sciences, as well as many applications. In addition, cloud-based tools for image processing and diagnostic analysis, usable by the project and science team members alike, will be available to examine these early data sets.

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Published
2024-12-02
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1109/ingarss61818.2024.10984256
Primary Topic
Spacecraft Design and Technology
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article
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article

The Nasa-Isro Sar Mission Leading up to Launch

R. B. Lohman, Shweta Sharma, M. Simons, Zhong Lu et al.
Spacecraft Design and Technology
article

The Nasa-Isro Sar Mission Leading up to Launch

R. B. Lohman, Shweta Sharma, M. Simons, Zhong Lu, E. Podest, Rick Forster, G. W. Bawden, C. Patnaik, Anup Das, Franz J. Meyer, Andrea Donnellan, Rashmi Sharma, K. M. Sreejith, Rajat Bindlish, Shadi Oveisgharan, B. Holt, Sean Helfrich, Sassan Saatchi, V. M. Ramanujam, B. Scheuchl, A. A. Borsa, Josef Kellndorfer, Paul Siqueira, Robert Zinke, Heresh Fattahi, Deepak Putrevu, Eric J. Rignot, Neeraj Agrawal, Raj Kumar, Ian Joughin, P. Jayaprasad, Ian Roundhill, E. J. Fielding, H. A. Zebker, P. A. Rosen, Katia Tymofyeyeva, Narendra N. Das, David Bekaert, Bruce Chapman, Alex Gardner, John Mathew, Seung-Bum Kim, P. V. Raju, Cathleen Jones, Praveen Kumar Gupta, Sandip R. Oza, Durga Rao Khv, Kyle Mcdonaldl
article en

Abstract

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) Mission experienced some technical issues in observatory level testing that required mitigations to be carried out on the reflector system, preventing a launch in 2024 as previously planned. The reflector has been reconditioned to address these issues, and NISAR is now on target for launch in early 2025. After launch, the spacecraft is planned to undergo commissioning for period of 90 days, after which science operations will begin. NISAR has two radar instruments - an L-band (24 cm wavelength) radar provided by NASA, and an S-band $(9.4 \mathrm{~cm}$ wavelength) radar provided by ISRO - each of which can be operated individually or simultaneously. Each radar has a swath width of greater than 240 km for all modes at a variety of resolutions and polarimetric states. Due to precise orbit control and pointing, each radar also will produce repeat-pass interferometric measurements over all science targets. During the science phase, NISAR will collect about 35 Terabits of L-band radar image data each day, observing all land and ice-covered surfaces of Earth on the ascending and descending portions of each orbit every 12 days, and collecting about 5 Terabits of S-band radar image data each day over India and surrounding areas, Antarctica, and distributed global scientific areas of interest. Nearly all S- band acquisitions are collected simultaneously with L-band acquisitions, creating a unique globally distributed time- series data set. The commissioning plan calls for early engineering mode acquisitions around one month after launch, some of which may be usable to form images, followed by a period of orbit adjustment and system timing and pointing calibration. To prepare for science operations, the NISAR project has worked with the science team to develop a list of observational areas where early data can be acquired to demonstrate the preliminary quality of the data and to illustrate the science themes NISAR is addressing: solid Earth sciences, ecosystems sciences including global soil moisture, and cryosphere sciences, as well as many applications. In addition, cloud-based tools for image processing and diagnostic analysis, usable by the project and science team members alike, will be available to examine these early data sets.

California Institute of Technology (US), City College of New York (US), Indian Space Research Organisation (IN), Goddard Space Flight Center (US), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (US), National Remote Sensing Centre (IN), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (US), University of Alaska Fairbanks (US), Scripps Institution of Oceanography (US), Southern Methodist University (US), University of California, Irvine (US), Cornell University (US), University of Utah (US), University of Massachusetts Amherst (US), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (US), University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory (US), Michigan State University (US), Stanford University (US)
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