A Send-off ceremony of science instrument payload of NISAR held at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on Feb 3, 2023. Shri S Somanath, Secretary, DOS / Chairman, ISRO, Sripriya Ranganathan, Indian Ambassador and Deputy Chief of Mission, officials from ISRO, NASA were present during the ceremony.

NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) is a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) observatory being jointly developed by NASA and ISRO. It carries L and S dual band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), which operates with Sweep SAR technique to achieve large swath with high resolution data. The SAR payloads mounted on Integrated Radar Instrument Structure (IRIS) and the spacecraft bus are together called an observatory

The NISAR observatory carries a 12m wide deployable mesh reflector mounted onto a deployable 9m boom developed by JPL which shall be used by both-JPL-NASA developed L-Band SAR payload system and ISRO developed S-Band SAR payload.

“Today we come one step closer to fulfilling the immense scientific potential NASA and ISRO envisioned for NISAR when we joined forces more than eight years ago,” Somanath said. “This mission will be a powerful demonstration of the capability of radar as a science tool and help us study Earth’s dynamic land and ice surfaces in greater detail than ever before.”