Chennai: It was a traditional Indian style send off ceremony by breaking coconuts for NISAR Satellite before it was airlifted to India for launch by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in 2024 from the spaceport of Sriharikota.
Officials from NASA, ISRO, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Indian Embassy held a send-off ceremony before the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) science instrument payload is transported to southern India for integration with the spacecraft bus, for further testing and launch in 2024.
NISAR, the SUV-size payload was loaded into a special cargo container for a 9,000 mile (14,000 km) flight journey to India’s U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru, where it will be merged with the spacecraft bus in preparation for a 2024 launch from Satish Dhawan Space Centre.
NISAR is a joint Earth-observing mission between NASA and ISRO.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of the project and is providing the mission’s L-band SAR. NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder and payload data subsystem.
ISRO is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band SAR, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations.
NASA shared the pictures of the satellite in JPL Clean room in its twitter handle.
Dignitaries from the US and Indian space agencies were invited to see NISAR’s science payload in a JPL clean room.
It’s nearly time for the scientific heart of NISAR–an Earth science satellite being jointly built by NASA and the ISRO to ship out to its last stop before launching into orbit.
Before its departure, NISAR’s advanced radar instruments were shown to the media in the clean room at NASA’s JPL in Southern California in the presence of ISRO Chairman S.Somanath, JPL Director Laurie Leshin, dignitaries from NASA headquarters and India, and members of the mission team.
“This marks an important milestone in our shared journey to better understand planet Earth and our changing climate,” Leshin said.
“NISAR will provide critical information on Earth’s crust, ice sheets, and ecosystems. By delivering measurements at unprecedented precision, NISAR’s promise is new understanding and positive impact in communities. Our collaboration with ISRO exemplifies what’s possible when we tackle complex challenges together”, he said. (UNI)
