ISRO launches Indo-us unique earth observing mission NISAR into space
This is the first collaborative mission between ISRO and NASA – costing $1.5 billion and with a mission life of five years – in which the unique satellite's dual-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) will employ advanced, novel SweepSAR technique, to provide high-resolution and large swath imagery. The 2,393-kg NISAR satellite will image the global land and ice-covered surfaces, including islands, sea ice and selected oceans every 12 days.
The lift-off of the 51.7-metre-tall GSLV F-16, carrying the 2,393-kg NISAR satellite, took place at the end of a 27.30-hour countdown from SDSC-SHAR's second launch. Precisely 19 minutes after lift-off, ISRO's launcher GSLV F-16 injected NISAR into a Sun Synchronous Polar Orbit (SSPO) at an orbit altitude of 747 km – the first time that ISRO's GSLV (Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle) has placed a satellite in a sun-synchronous orbit, as all earlier GSLV launches had placed satellites in Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO). ISRO Chairman and Secretary, Department of Space, V Narayanan, said after the successful launch and satellite's orbital insertion, 'All the vehicle system performances were quite normal as expected and as predicted. Today, we achieved the intended orbit. Actually, we have got an orbit with a dispersion (deviation from desired orbit) of less than 3 km, as against the permissible level of 20 km... all parameters are as expected.' He added that GSLV F-16's cryogenic upper stage corrections and a host of mission simulations were carried out very systematically and meticulously.
Chaitra Rao, Project Spacecraft Director, NISAR, said that as per schedule, NISAR's solar panels were deployed and the satellite was appropriately titled. The first 90 days of the mission will be dedicated to commissioning, or In-Orbit Checkout (IOC), to prepare NISAR for science operations. Commissioning is divided into sub-phases of initial checks and calibrations of mainframe elements followed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) engineering payload and instrument checkout.
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