NISAR is a joint initiative of India and the U.S. which will measure Earth’s changing ecosystems, dynamic surfaces, and ice masses providing information about biomass, natural hazards, sea level rise, and groundwater, and will support a host of other applications.
This is a Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite with two bands — S-band and L band.
The S-band payload has been made by the ISRO and the L-band by the U.S and the U.S. will also contribute to the large deployable antenna.
It can fully cover the earth in approximately 14 to 15 days, in radar. It gives full coverage of the earth two times a month.
It can monitor the tectonic movements to centimetre accuracy. It can measure water bodies accurately.
It can look at water stressing on the earth, wherever there is a deficiency of water.
It can ground-penetrate to a certain depth. It is capable of monitoring the vegetation cover and snow cover. Therefore, basically It looks at the whole of the earth in terms of surface, water, greenery and all of that.
This data will be available to both India and the U.S. It can measure tectonic plate movements accurately.
We can study climate change-related issues, agricultural changes through patterns, yield, desertification and continental movements precisely.
Though it can penetrate the ground, it can not detect buried archaeological sites which will require radar near the surface.
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