Launching today: ISRO-NASA’s NISAR will show Earth breathe, crack, and move in real time. 6 points
The satellite—a $1.5 billion mission, with India contributing ₹788 crore—will make its data freely available to scientists, governments, farmers, disaster response teams, and yes, the public.
- Jul 30, 2025,
- Updated Jul 30, 2025 8:48 AM IST
What if we told you a satellite could see through forests, clouds, and even ice—and warn us of disasters before they happen? That’s exactly what NISAR, a joint NASA-ISRO mission launching today, is about to do. And yes—you can watch it.
Set to launch aboard India’s GSLV Mk II rocket from Sriharikota, the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) is no ordinary Earth-observing satellite. With its massive gold radar antenna and world-first dual-frequency radar system, NISAR is designed to map our planet with unprecedented detail, every 12 days.
The satellite—a $1.5 billion mission, with India contributing ₹788 crore—will make its data freely available to scientists, governments, farmers, disaster response teams, and yes, the public.
But what can it actually see?
1. Shifts Smaller Than a Millimeter NISAR can detect land movement too subtle for human eyes or traditional satellites—from groundwater withdrawal sinking entire cities, to pre-quake land uplifts that hint at future earthquakes.
2. Forest Secrets and Ice Movements Thanks to its L-band radar, NISAR sees beneath forest canopies to monitor biomass, regrowth, or illegal logging—day or night. Over polar ice caps, it will track how glaciers move and melt, even through storms or clouds.
3. Floods and Farm Fields in Real Time It can “see” through cloud cover to map floods as they happen—critical for states like Assam or Kerala. NISAR can also monitor crop growth, planting cycles, and even unauthorized wetland development.
4. Coastlines, Oil Spills, and Crumbling Infrastructure From tracking coastal erosion to detecting tiny shifts in dams or bridges before structural failure, NISAR offers a planetary early warning system.
5. The Earth’s Hidden Pulse NISAR will map how land swells and sinks over time—creating 3D time-lapse maps of tectonic strain, volcanic shifts, and subsurface activity invisible to the naked eye.
6. And Much More It can track permafrost melt, measure global soil moisture, and reveal how human activity reshapes land—all in high resolution and completely open to public use.
WHERE TO WATCH NISAR will launch from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (Sriharikota) aboard a GSLV Mk II rocket, with the event expected to be streamed live on ISRO’s official YouTube channel and website.
This isn’t just a satellite launch—it’s the start of a mission that could change how we understand our planet. With NISAR, NASA and ISRO are making the invisible visible—on a global scale.
What if we told you a satellite could see through forests, clouds, and even ice—and warn us of disasters before they happen? That’s exactly what NISAR, a joint NASA-ISRO mission launching today, is about to do. And yes—you can watch it.
Set to launch aboard India’s GSLV Mk II rocket from Sriharikota, the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) is no ordinary Earth-observing satellite. With its massive gold radar antenna and world-first dual-frequency radar system, NISAR is designed to map our planet with unprecedented detail, every 12 days.
The satellite—a $1.5 billion mission, with India contributing ₹788 crore—will make its data freely available to scientists, governments, farmers, disaster response teams, and yes, the public.
But what can it actually see?
1. Shifts Smaller Than a Millimeter NISAR can detect land movement too subtle for human eyes or traditional satellites—from groundwater withdrawal sinking entire cities, to pre-quake land uplifts that hint at future earthquakes.
2. Forest Secrets and Ice Movements Thanks to its L-band radar, NISAR sees beneath forest canopies to monitor biomass, regrowth, or illegal logging—day or night. Over polar ice caps, it will track how glaciers move and melt, even through storms or clouds.
3. Floods and Farm Fields in Real Time It can “see” through cloud cover to map floods as they happen—critical for states like Assam or Kerala. NISAR can also monitor crop growth, planting cycles, and even unauthorized wetland development.
4. Coastlines, Oil Spills, and Crumbling Infrastructure From tracking coastal erosion to detecting tiny shifts in dams or bridges before structural failure, NISAR offers a planetary early warning system.
5. The Earth’s Hidden Pulse NISAR will map how land swells and sinks over time—creating 3D time-lapse maps of tectonic strain, volcanic shifts, and subsurface activity invisible to the naked eye.
6. And Much More It can track permafrost melt, measure global soil moisture, and reveal how human activity reshapes land—all in high resolution and completely open to public use.
WHERE TO WATCH NISAR will launch from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (Sriharikota) aboard a GSLV Mk II rocket, with the event expected to be streamed live on ISRO’s official YouTube channel and website.
This isn’t just a satellite launch—it’s the start of a mission that could change how we understand our planet. With NISAR, NASA and ISRO are making the invisible visible—on a global scale.