India's progression of the Dual Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system - Stepping Stone from Pixel to Policy through NISAR

India's progression of the Dual Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system - Stepping Stone from Pixel to Policy through NISAR

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, set to launch on July 30, 2025, from Sriharikota, is poised to revolutionise India's socio-economic development and climate stewardship. This groundbreaking Earth observation mission offers cutting-edge, accurate data that supports multiple critical sectors.

In the agricultural sector, NISAR enables advanced crop prediction, soil moisture, and plant health monitoring, directly benefiting India's key economy. It enhances disaster management capabilities by offering near real-time data on natural calamities like floods and earthquakes, improving emergency response and resilience.

From a climate stewardship perspective, NISAR tracks glacier dynamics, deforestation, land use changes, and ice mass variations with unprecedented detail, supporting climate change monitoring and environmental conservation efforts. This facilitates informed policymaking aligned with India's commitments under international frameworks like the Paris Agreement.

The mission’s open-access data policy democratises high-quality Earth observation information, benefiting India's scientific community as well as global researchers, particularly in developing countries lacking similar satellite capabilities.

NISAR's data boosts capabilities in urban planning, coastal and maritime management, aviation safety, infrastructure development, and shipping route optimization—areas vital for sustainable socio-economic growth. The mission also symbolises and strengthens the strategic India-US partnership in space technology, positioning India as a global leader in advanced Earth observation and promoting international scientific collaboration for sustainable development.

However, challenges persist. The mission's data requires careful management due to its potential use in hostile intelligence. A policy for tiered latency for sensitive zones is necessary to address this concern. The petabyte-scale data deluge requires NRSC's present 1 Pb annually to triple, necessitating infrastructure upgrades. Inter-agency coordination is lacking, with ministries operating siloed GIS stacks. A Nation-wide Corner Reflector Grid of 200 low-cost trihedral reflectors is proposed via IIT-ISRO MoUs to address the calibration complexity.

In conclusion, NISAR supports India’s socio-economic development by improving agricultural productivity, disaster resilience, and resource management, while its contributions to climate stewardship include enhanced environmental monitoring and enabling data-driven climate action. The mission's open-data policy directly advances Sustainable Development Goals 2, 11, 13, & 15, positioning India as a leader in sustainable development.

To further leverage NISAR's potential, cloud-native Data Lake fast-tracking is suggested to permit Jupyter-based analytics pipelines for start-ups. The data will be used in various domains, including Solid Earth, Ecosystems & Agriculture, Cryosphere, Coastal & Ocean, Disaster Response, and additional 'Plus' uses.

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1. The advanced data provided by NISAR's mission can be beneficial in the field of agriculture, as it aids in crop prediction, soil moisture, and plant health monitoring, which directly impacts the financial sector by contributing to increased agricultural productivity.
2. In the realm of technology and business, the data from NISAR can be utilized in urban planning, coastal and maritime management, aviation safety, infrastructure development, and shipping route optimization, thereby fostering innovation and sustainable economic growth.
3. The space-and-astronomy sector will also benefit from NISAR's mission, as it offers a chance for global scientists, particularly in developing countries, to collaborate and conduct research using high-quality Earth observation data, thus promoting technological advancements and bolstering international partnerships.

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