Scientists and engineers involved in the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission have completed key tests including the thermal vacuum testing ahead of its launch which is scheduled to take place in the first quarter of 2024.
Phil Barela, NASA NISAR project manager, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said that crucial thermal vacuum testing was completed in Bengaluru.
“I am very pleased to say that the thermal vacuum test which is a very important test we do at the system level to make sure that we have worked out all the bugs and the temperature etc has been completed which is a key milestone for the team,” Mr Barela said.
He also added that the Electromagnetic interference (EMI) and Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) testing has been completed and the next up would be the crucial vibration tests.
“We got to simulate the harshest environment the spacecraft ever sees and there is nothing scarier than putting a whole satellite on a shaker cable and watching it shake while simulating in the launch environment. That’s the big test,” Mr Barela added.
NISAR is a Low Earth Orbit observatory jointly developed by NASA and ISRO which is expected to be launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota onboard ISRO’s GSLV Mark-II launch vehicle.
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According to NASA, NISAR data will help researchers monitor a wide range of changes in unprecedented detail which includes spotting warning signs of imminent volcanic eruptions, helping monitor the effects of groundwater use such as land subsidence, tracking the melt rate of ice sheets tied to sea level rise and observing shifts in the distribution of vegetation around the earth.
The $1.5-billion NISAR’s mission life is for three years and the satellite will survey all of earth’s land and ice-covered surfaces every 12 days and this starts after a 90 day satellite commissioning period.
NISAR carries L and S dual-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), which operates with the Sweep SAR technique to achieve large swaths with high-resolution data. The SAR payloads mounted on Integrated Radar Instrument Structure (IRIS) and the spacecraft bus are together called an observatory.
NASA’s JPL 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’s U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band SAR electronics, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations.
Dr Laurie Leshin, director, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA said that over the last nine months over 160 JPL team members have travelled to India and at any given time there are about 30 to 40 members based in Bengaluru working shoulder to shoulder with their ISRO colleagues.
She added that NISAR is better than anything NASA has flown so far.
