A.3 NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar Mission Data, Applications, Research, and Technology Team

The NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR: http://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov) mission evolved from the radar element of the Deformation, Ecosystem Structure, and Dynamics of Ice (DESDynI) mission concept from the 2007 U.S. National Research Council (NRC) Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond; referred to as the “2007 Decadal Survey”. NASA established a partnership with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in 2014 to develop a mission that could achieve the science objectives for the radar elements outlined in the 2007 Decadal Survey. The NISAR mission is providing large scale data sets of Earth surface dynamics that are critical to three Earth Science disciplines: 1) Earth Surface and Interior (Deformation), 2) Terrestrial Ecology (Vegetation, Carbon Cycle) and 3) Cryosphere (Climate Change), and will contribute to others including Terrestrial Hydrology (Water Cycle). NISAR will also provide valuable data for numerous science applications including hazard/disaster management cycle (i.e., earthquakes, volcanic unrests, oil spills, flooding, wildland fires), agriculture and food security, forest and wetland management, infrastructure monitoring, and costal resilience. In addition to the science and applications identified in the 2007 Decadal Survey, the Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG) found that by increasing NISAR’s downlink bandwidth, NISAR could collect higher resolution data over North America and could provide a near global soil moisture product, both capabilities directly benefiting the land monitoring U.S. Federal agencies. Additionally, this increased bandwidth enables NISAR to collect data in the coastal regions to about 650km offshore of the continental United States (East and West Coasts) and Hawaii along with the Gulf of Coast to the Lesser Antilles including the Caribbean Sea to enable sea wind measurements (i.e., hurricanes and atmospheric rivers) and study ocean and coastal processes.

The NISAR Mission Science Users Handbook (second edition,2025) contains additional details on the science focus areas, mission measurement requirements and traceability, instrument and mission characteristics including the observing strategy, description of the data products, imagery resolution and delivery, the theoretical basis of algorithms for the NISAR products, and calibration and validation plans. Key appendices describe radar instrument modes, data product layers and provide brief descriptions of other applications. Additional NISAR resources such as the Utilization Plan, Calibration/Validation Plan, and white papers can be found at: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/nisar/.