World's first SweepSAR has SAC-ISRO made indigenous radar to minutely record changes on Earth

Time of India

3 days ago

Ahmedabad: As the 12-metre-wide radar antenna of NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite will be opened this week in space, the costliest satellite-based Earth observation mission has an Ahmedabad connection.
The scientists at Space Applications Centre (SAC) of ISRO developed the S-band radar aboard the satellite. The dual-band radar, the other being L-band developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of NASA, is the world's first SweepSAR that will track the minutest changes on Earth, from polar ice caps to forest land, and from biomass to tectonic activities.
Nilesh Desai, director of SAC-ISRO, said that in multiple ways NISAR is a historic mission.
"It is an important milestone in Indo-US space partnership with the US providing L-band radar along with the eponymous SAR and India providing S-band radar, satellite bus, and launch vehicle to the mission. For India and the world, it will be the first mission with both polarimetric and interferometric modes with SweepSAR technique," said Desai, adding that the new technologies will provide a major boost to the existing capabilities and future missions of India.
Desai said that what made the mission unique was compatibility and thorough testing it went through in two countries. "Both bands of the radar must work in tandem to provide the true picture of the scanned parts of Earth. It was achieved through unprecedented cooperation and understanding of each other's methods and instruments," he added.
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The ambitious project, which was 13 years in making, said Desai, is an equal partnership with the US as India indigenously developed the S-band radar for the mission.
"Like satellite-based optical imaging earlier, today we are global leaders when it comes to microwave radar, and it is a matter of pride for us that the radar array is totally developed indigenously in SAC-ISRO Ahmedabad," he said.
From SAC-ISRO, a team of scientists worked closely with their counterparts in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of NASA.
As the state experienced a massive earthquake in 2001 that resulted in the loss of thousands of lives and infrastructure worth crores, the data generated by NISAR provides a ray of hope.
"Data generated by NISAR can be analysed for assessing the tectonic plate movement at the scale of centimetres with repeated scanning. So far it is not possible to predict earthquakes, but the land deformation studies using the NISAR data will hopefully help the global community in saving lives and resources," said Desai.
The highlight of the project is SweepSAR technology, said experts, that dramatically increases the resolution of the radar imaging. In simplified terms, the highly advanced array of radar antennas in the satellite 'sweeps' the swathe beneath with radio waves and receives it back. They can be individually controlled and steered depending on the imaging requirements. The technology allows many echoes from the ground to be received across the wide swath, giving much more data compared to conventional radars.
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