India will receive a NASA and ISRO-developed earth observation satellite later this month that will help with more in-depth investigation of Earth's land and ice surfaces.
Two broken coconuts lay in the frame, as the Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) received a jar of peanuts from a top NASA official, at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in United States.
Seen towards the rear of the frame is a model of the crucial component of the first-ever India-US joint satellite mission known as NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR).
NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) is a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) observatory being jointly developed by the American and Indian Space agencies. It is designed to carry Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), an extremely potent, all-weather, day and night imaging method from space that can assist researchers and scientists in observing changes in Earth's land and ice surfaces down to fractions of an inch.
NISAR will gather radar data with a drum-shaped reflector antenna almost 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter. It will use a signal-processing technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, or InSAR, to observe changes on Earth, that can be used to predict natural disasters, track climate change.
"Through the detection of both little and large motions, the observations made by NISAR will aid scientists in measuring the ways in which Earth is continually changing. Land surface changes that move slowly can occur before earthquakes, landslides, and volcanic eruptions, and information on these changes could help people get ready for natural disasters. Understanding of the pace and effects of climate change, particularly sea level rise, will be improved by measurements of melting sea ice and ice sheets" said NASA.