Bengaluru: An earth-observation satellite jointly developed by NASA and ISRO that will help study Earth’s land and ice surfaces in greater detail is all set to be shipped to India later this month for a possible launch in September.
Nicola Fox, Associate Administrator (AA), NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) will soon be visiting the ISRO facility to take a closer look at the satellite and meet the team to understand more about how the dual frequency band will measure the Earth’s changing ecosystem.
The NASA administrator was speaking a the ‘Space Talk with NASA Women Scientists’ organised by the US Consulate General Chennai and Maharani Lakshmi Ammanni College for Women Autonomous (mLAC) in the city. “This is a very clever technique using the L band and S band, and I am very excited about this flagship event which will measure the changes in our planet’s surface just about at a centimeter’s scale.”
She added that the partnership with ISRO is very beneficial as the agency uses complementary science and has real-world applications of the data produced.
Highlighting the need for robust computational power and the demand for new applications, Fox said that the rate at which data is being generated is very difficult for “humans to look through” and would need artificial intelligence. “If we are generating 100 terabytes of dat right now through the Earth observation satellite, with NISAR’s launch it will double down.”
