Guiding New Earth Satellite Put to Test in Preparation for Launch

Throughout 3 weeks in a thermal vacuum chamber in Bengaluru, India, the joint NASA-ISRO satellite showed its strength in a severe, space-like environment.

NISAR, the trailblazing Earth-observing radar satellite being established by the United States and Indian area companies, passed a significant turning point on Nov. 13, emerging from a 21-day test targeted at assessing its capability to operate in the severe temperature levels and the vacuum of area.

Brief for NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, NISAR is the very first area hardware cooperation in between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation, or ISRO, on an Earth-observing objective. Set up to release in early 2024, the satellite will scan almost all the world’s land and ice two times every 12 days, keeping track of the movement of those surface areas to portions of an inch. It will have the ability to observe motions from earthquakes, landslides, and volcanic activity and track vibrant modifications in forests, wetlandsand farming lands.

The thermal vacuum test happened at ISRO’s Satellite Integration and Test Establishment in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru. It’s one of a battery of tests the satellite will deal with causing launch. Other tests will guarantee it can stand up to the shaking, vibration, and scrambling that it will come across throughout launch.

NISAR, partly covered in gold-hued thermal blanketing, got in the vacuum chamber on Oct. 19. Over the following week, engineers and professionals reduced the pressure to an infinitesimal portion of the typical pressure at sea level. They likewise subjected the satellite to an 80-hour “cold soak” at 14 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 10 degrees Celsius), followed by a similarly prolonged “hot soak” at as much as 122 F (50 C). This mimics the temperature level swings the spacecraft will experience as it is exposed to sunshine and darkness in orbit.

ISRO and JPL groups worked all the time throughout the three-week duration, checking the efficiency of the satellite’s thermal systems and its 2 main science instrument systems– the L-band and S-band radars — under the most severe temperature level conditions they will experience in area.

This most current round of screening followed 20 days of screening in September in which engineers utilized ISRO’s compact antenna test center to assess whether the radio signals from the 2 radar systems’ antennas passed requirements. Blue foam spikes lining the center’s walls, flooring, and ceiling avoid radio waves from bouncing around the space and hindering measurement.

With thermal vacuum and compact antenna tests effectively done, NISAR will quickly be fitted with its photovoltaic panels and its almost 40-foot (12-meter) radar antenna reflector, which looks like a snare drum and will unfold in area at the end of a 30-foot (9-meter) boom extending from the spacecraft.

The satellite will go through extra tests before being left and transferred about 220 miles (350 kilometers) eastward to Satish Dhawan Space Centre, where it will be installed atop ISRO’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark II rocket and sent out into low Earth orbit.

More About the Mission

NISAR is an equivalent partnership in between NASA and ISRO and marks the very first time the 2 firms have actually worked together on hardware advancement for an Earth-observing objective. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is handled for the firm by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. part of the task and is offering the objective’s L-band SAR. NASA is likewise supplying the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate interaction subsystem for science information, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload information subsystem. U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) in Bengaluru, which leads the ISRO element of the objective, is supplying the spacecraft bus, the launch lorry, and associated launch services and satellite objective operations. ISRO’s Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad is offering the S-band SAR electronic devices.

To read more about NISAR, check out:

https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov/

News Media Contacts

Andrew Wang/ Jane J. Lee
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874/ 818-354-0307
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov

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