Satellite developed by NASA, India to map Earth down to centimeter

Science

Satellite developed by NASA, India to map Earth down to centimeter

by Allen Cone

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 28, 2025

NASA and India plan to deploy a satellite that will map the Earth down to a centimeter after a launch on Wednesday from the Asian nation’s southeastern coast.

The rocket launch by the Indian Space Research Organization is scheduled from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on an island at 5:40 p.m. local time, NASA said in a news release Monday.

The launch broadcast will begin at 7 a.m. EDT on Wednesday from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on the YouTube channel.

The satellite, about the length of a pickup truck, will circle Earth 14 times each day, scanning virtually all the planet’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days.

This is the first of its kind dual-radar using an L-band and S-band.

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar will map the Earth in 3D with the different radar frequencies to measure changes in Earth’s surface, NASA said.

“The satellite’s ability to ‘see’ through clouds and light rain, day and night, will enable data users to continuously monitor earthquake- and landslide-prone areas and determine how quickly glaciers and ice sheets are changing,” NASA said in a list of things to know about the mission. “It also will offer unprecedented coverage of Antarctica, information that will help with studying how the continent’s ice sheet changes over time.”

This data will provide high-resolution data for communities and scientists to monitor major infrastructure and agricultural fields that will “refine understanding of natural hazards such as landslides and earthquakes, and help teams prepare for and respond to disasters like hurricanes, floods, and volcanic eruptions,” NASA said in a news release.

Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, JPL leads the U.S.portion of the project and provided the L-band SAR. JPL also provided other aspects of the system, including the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, GPS receivers.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will receive NISAR’s L-band data.

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