NISAR Mission
7/30/2025
NISAR distinguishes different land cover types, including low vegetation, trees, and man-made structures.
NISAR's radar system operates in L-band and can resolve objects up to 5 meters in size.
NISAR is expected to enter full scientific operations by the end of the year.
NISAR's L-band radar is capable of measuring soil moisture and surface movement within fractions of an inch.
NISAR is a satellite for Earth observation developed by NASA and ISRO.
The circular radar antenna reflector of NISAR measures 12 meters in diameter and is the largest of its kind ever deployed in space.
NISAR deployed its giant circular radar antenna reflector in August.
Comprehensive time-series radar data from NISAR will allow civil engineers to observe trends and stress points with greater clarity.
The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite is designed to collect higher-resolution data than previous satellites.
NISAR will systematically gather imagery of nearly every bridge in the world twice every 12 days.
As of January 23, 2026, the NISAR mission team released nine new sample data products representing the first public release of NISAR Level 1 to Level 3 L-band data.
The 12 m diameter antenna reflector for the NISAR satellite was successfully deployed on August 15, 2025.
As of March 9, 2017, the NISAR project involved building a 2,600 kg satellite to study Earth's surface change, ice-sheet collapse, and natural hazards.
As of June 25, 2022, NISAR deployment appeared to have been pushed to 2024 according to joint IMD/ISRO updates presented at CGMS-50.
As of March 14, 2019, the NISAR satellite was expected to be launched in 2020.
NISAR is a synthetic aperture radar satellite developed jointly by NASA and ISRO.
NASA’s fiscal year 2020 budget request estimates that NASA will spend nearly $900,000,000 on the NISAR mission.
NASA and ISRO signed a partnership on 2014-09-30 to collaborate on and launch the NISAR mission.
ISRO is providing the NISAR spacecraft bus, the S-band radar, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services.
NASA spent more than $1,000,000,000 in formulation and development of the NISAR mission.