Why in news? The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has received the NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) satellite from the U.S. space agency.

Highlights:

• According to ISRO, NISAR will map the entire globe in 12 days and provide spatially and temporally consistent data for understanding changes in Earth’s ecosystems, ice mass, vegetation biomass, sea level rise, groundwater and natural hazards, including earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides.
• NISAR carries L and S dual-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), which operates with the Sweep SAR technique to achieve large swaths with high-resolution data.
• The SAR payloads mounted on Integrated Radar Instrument Structure (IRIS) and the spacecraft bus are together called an
• Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California have been integrating and testing NISAR’s two radar systems — the L-band SAR provided by JPL and the S-band SAR built by ISRO.
• The final integration of the satellite will be carried out at the R. Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru.
• ISRO is looking to launch the satellite in 2024 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

About NISAR

• The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission is a joint project between NASA and ISRO to co-develop and launch a dual-frequency synthetic aperture radar on an Earth observation satellite.
• The satellite will be the first radar imaging satellite to use dual frequencies.
• It will be used for remote sensing, to observe and understand natural processes on Earth.
• NISAR is likely to be the world’s most expensive Earth-imaging satellite
• The satellite will be launched from India aboard a GSLV in Q1 of 2024.
• The orbit will be a Sun-synchronous, dawn-to-dusk type.
• The planned mission life is three years.
• It is designed to observe and measure some of the planet’s most complex natural processes, including ecosystem disturbances, ice-sheet collapse, and natural hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides