India and US get ready for next joint space mission with NISAR launch likely in July end

The mission will lift off from ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

Come July end, a first-of-its-kind earth observation satellite with an advanced radar system will be launched into space to provide a three-dimensional view of Earth in great detail

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, a joint project between National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and India Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to co-develop and launch a dual-frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) on an Earth observation satellite, is expected to launch no later than end of July. The mission will lift off from ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

Sources said that both satellite and launch vehicle are at the spaceport and final checks are underway. With the mission in its last leg, NASA is also set to host a mission update briefing on July 21.

Long collaboration

With the Indian and US space agencies collaborating as early as 2014 to launch NISAR, the mission has been in the works for over a decade now.

Under NISAR, NASA is providing the mission’s L-band synthetic aperture radar, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder and payload data subsystem. ISRO is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band radar, the launch vehicle and associated launch services.

NISAR can help in detecting the movement of land and ice surfaces down to the centimetre. NISAR will observe Earth’s land and ice-covered surfaces globally in a 12-day frequency during a baseline mission duration of three years.

“Earth’s surface is constantly changing as a result of both natural and human processes, and humanity’s exposure to natural hazards is increasing. NISAR will measure these changes, from small movements of the crust up to volcanic eruption,” NASA said in a note.

“NISAR’s global and rapid coverage will provide unprecedented opportunities for disaster response, providing data to assist in mitigating and assessing damage, with observations before and after disasters in short time frames,” it added.

Engineers from ISRO and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which manages the mission, have been working together at ISRO’s Satellite Integration and Test Establishment in Bengaluru since March 2023 on bringing together components and assembling the satellite. The satellite arrived from Bengaluru to the Satish Dhawan Space Centre earlier in May 2025.

Published on July 20, 2025