Kochi: Indian and US launched a new satellite to closely monitor minute changes on Earth, sea, and ice sheets from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikotta near Chennai on Wednesday, BBC reported.
Data from the joint mission by Indian Space agency ISRO and NASA will help the world in preparing and dealing with disasters.
The 2,392kg NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) was launched at 5.40 pm.
NASA says NISAR is the “most sophisticated radar we’ve ever built” and that it will be able to spot the “minutest of changes anywhere in the world”. The “first-of-its-kind satellite” will be the first in space to watch Earth using two different radar frequencies – NASA’s L-band and ISRO’s S-band.
Changes are happening on the earth surface, some slowly, some abruptly, some are small while some are subtle, NASA’s’ director of Earth Sciences Karen St Germain, told a pre-launch press conference, BBC said.
The satellite will take 90 days to fully deploy and will start collecting data once tests on all its systems are complete.
The $1.5bn joint mission, over a decade in the making, features India’s payload, rocket, and launch-pad facilities.
Nasa’s St Germain said the satellite was special as it was built by scientists “who were at the opposite ends of the globe during the Covid-19 pandemic”.
India has been making big strides in its space programme recently.India made history when it became the first to land on the lunar south pole region in August 2023.
Indian Science Minister Jitendra Singh has called the mission a defining moment in India-US space cooperation and a boost to ISRO’s international collaborations.
India commissioned its first solar observation mission last year.
ISRO.has announced plans to launch Gaganyaan – the country’s first-ever human space flight – in 2027 and has ambitious plans to set up a space station by 2035 and send an astronaut to the Moon by 2040.
