ISRO LAUNCHES OBSERVING MIS

THE Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Wednesday successfully launched the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) at 5.40 pm from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), Sriharikota High Altitude Range (SHAR), marking the 102nd launch from here.

- BOSKY KHANNA @Bengaluru

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).