India Launches NASA-ISRO $1.5B NISAR Satellite Tracking Global Earth Changes

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, launched on July 30, 2025, represents a landmark collaboration between the United States and India, combining NASA’s L-band radar with ISRO’s S-band radar to create the world’s first dual-frequency radar imaging satellite. NISAR orbits Earth every 97 minutes, capturing high-resolution images of the planet's surface regardless of weather or lighting conditions, enabling detection of minute land shifts and monitoring of natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, and landslides. The satellite's data, which will be freely available, aims to enhance disaster response, food security, environmental management, and climate resilience worldwide. This mission underscores the importance of international cooperation in Earth observation, a theme emphasized at the 2025 ESA Living Planet Symposium, where leaders from global space agencies highlighted collaboration as essential infrastructure for advancing Earth science and climate action. The decade-long partnership behind NISAR exemplifies how shared scientific ambition and technical trust can drive technological leadership and global benefits. Together, these efforts reflect a growing recognition that space-based Earth monitoring requires unified global efforts to effectively address environmental challenges and disasters.