NASA has shipped a key component of the NISAR satellite to India for launch next year. The agency's C-130 Hercules aircraft took off from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia last week to pick up the radar antenna reflector - a major contribution by NASA for the satellite - from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

NISAR, short for NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, has been developed under joint collaboration between the two agencies and is targeted for launch no earlier than February 2025.

The plane carrying the instrument will land at the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited Airport in Bengaluru before being integrated to the satellite and transported to Sriharikota for launch.

The instrument is the reason which delayed NISAR's launch from 2024 to 2025. It is designed to transmit and receive microwave signals to and from Earth's surface, enabling NISAR to scan nearly all the planet's land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days to collect science data.

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The mission team found a few months ago that the drum shaped component needs better coating to withstand high temperatures in space. In July, NASA said that a reflective tape has been applied and additional measures were taken to fix the issue.

Meanwhile, the NASA plane will cover approximately 24,500 nautical miles and nearly 80 hours of flight time when it lands in Bengaluru. It has multiple stops on the way in California, Hawaii and the Philippines to service the aircraft and reduce crew fatigue.

As for NISAR, it will map the planet every 12 days to gather data on changes in Earth's ecosystems, ice mass, vegetation biomass, sea level rise, ground water and natural hazards including earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides.

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(Image: NASA)