World’s most expensive Indo-US Nisar satellite set for launch in March 2025: NASA

After unprecedented delay, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has finally announced that the world’s most advanced and expensive earth observation satellite NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar — NISAR, jointly developed by India and the US for over a decade, is “likely to be launched in March” next year.

It was earlier scheduled for launch in 2024.

In a recently released statement, the US space agency said, “NASA and ISRO are looking at a likely launch date in March 2025. Short for Nasa-Isro Synthetic Aperture Radar, NISAR will scan nearly all of Earth’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days to measure changes in the planet’s ecosystems, its land and sea ice, and its solid Earth. The NISAR satellite will launch from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on India’s southeastern coast.”

The 2.8-tonne NISAR satellite, whose development started after India and the US signed an agreement in 2014, is designed to monitor planetary changes with unmatched precision. The over Rs 5,800-crore imaging satellite is the first of its kind in the world as it features dual-frequency radar—NASA’s L-band (1.25 GHz) and ISRO’s S-band (3.20 GHz), which will deliver unparalleled data accuracy. Its critical components were transported from the US to India in Oct 2024, marking a significant logistical feat. However, the mission faced delays due to technical complexities with its 12-meter radar antenna reflector.

NISAR's data can help people worldwide better manage natural resources and hazards, as well as provide information for scientists to better understand the effects and pace of climate change. It will also add to the scientists’ understanding of the earth's hard outer layer, its crust.

Observations from NISAR will benefit humanity by helping researchers around the world better understand changes in the Earth’s surface, including its ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice. It will also capture changes in its forest and wetland ecosystems as well as movement and deformation of the Earth’s crust such as earthquakes, landslides, and volcanic activity, NASA said in a statement.

The global and rapid coverage from NISAR will provide unprecedented opportunities for disaster response, producing data to assist in mitigating and assessing damage, with observations before and after disasters in short time frames. Its data will also help scientists understand solid earth movements and their implications, it said.

The satellite’s key capabilities include generating high-resolution images using radio signals, functioning effectively in darkness and adverse weather, detecting surface changes as small as one inch, and penetrating dense vegetation for comprehensive mapping.