The radar payload has been integrated with the satellite bus at the UR Rao Satellite Centre in Bangalore, making a single spacecraft in mid June. Personnel have been routing thousands of metres of cables between the payload and the bus since then. The solar panels on the satellite, along with a large, 12 metre diameter drum-shaped wire mesh reflector remain to be attached.

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite is being assembled at Bangalore’s U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC). The personnel have integrated the radar payload with the spacecraft bus, with the radar reflector and solar panels remaining to be attached. With a diameter of 12 meters, the reflector will be the largest radar antenna of its kind deployed into space.

The satellite will be able to monitor the surface of the Earth, peering through any obscuring clouds in the atmosphere. Every corner of the planet will be imaged by the satellite once every 12 days. There are two instruments on the payload, an S-band radar that can monitor crops, ice sheets and land as well as the L-band radar that can peer through the canopies of dense forests. Together, the instruments will allow scientists to monitor forests, wetlands and agricultural activity globally.

The S-band radar was produced by the Space Applications Centre (SAC) in Ahmedabad, India while the L-band radar was developed at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, United States. The satellite was thus built in opposite sides of the world. The S-band radar was flown to JPL, where both the radar instruments were attached to a frame similar to a barrel, forming the primary payload of the satellite. The frame was then flown back to Bangalore, where it was attached to the bus or main body of the spacecraft at URSC.

The spacecraft is currently undergoing performance testing, after which it will be taken to a vibration test chamber to ensure that the satellite can survive the rough rocket ride to Earth orbit. Once the spacecraft is assembled, it will be trucked to the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) at the Sriharikota High Altitude Range (SHAR), which is ISRO’s spaceport. There, it will be housed within the nose cone of the rocket, hoisted on top of a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle MK-II (GSLV MK-II) and then lifted off into Earth orbit.