NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) are set to launch the $1.5 billion NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) Earth observation satellite from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, in July 2025. This mission represents an equal partnership between NASA and ISRO and marks the first time both agencies have collaborated on hardware for an Earth-observing satellite.

NISAR is the world’s first Earth-observing satellite equipped with dual-frequency radar, combining NASA’s L-band and ISRO’s S-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems. This advanced technology enables the satellite to actively send radar pulses to Earth and analyse their return, allowing it to capture high-resolution images of the planet’s land, ice, and water surfaces every 12 days.

Unlike traditional optical satellites, NISAR can operate day and night, in all weather conditions, and can see through clouds, smoke, vegetation, and even tree canopies.

Weighing nearly three tonnes, NISAR will orbit about 700 kilometers above Earth and systematically scan nearly all land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. Its radar antenna, which unfolds to a 13-meter diameter, will provide unprecedented coverage and precision, detecting ground movements as small as a few millimetres.

This capability is crucial for monitoring earthquakes, floods, landslides, soil moisture, glacier melt, changes in agricultural patterns, and coastal erosion. The satellite will also track annual changes in bathymetry along deltaic regions, monitor shoreline erosion and accretion, and observe sea ice characteristics near India’s Antarctic stations. The data can be used to detect and locate marine oil spills for rapid response.

A defining feature of the NISAR mission is its open data policy. All high-resolution imagery and data collected will be freely available to scientists, agencies, and governments worldwide, supporting global research in climate science, disaster management, groundwater monitoring, forest biomass assessment, and dam integrity analysis. Experts anticipate that NISAR’s comprehensive, freely accessible data will significantly advance both climate research and disaster relief efforts globally.

The satellite’s arrival at the launch site in May 2025 followed extensive integration and testing by teams from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and ISRO’s Space Applications Centre, ensuring it is ready to withstand the rigors of launch and function effectively in orbit. After years of collaboration, the NISAR mission is poised to revolutionise how scientists observe and understand Earth’s dynamic environment, offering a new era of precision and accessibility in Earth observation.

Agencies