NASA and India’s ISRO – the Indian Space Research Organization – will jointly build a satellite called NISAR or the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite which could be the world’s most expensive Earth imaging satellite, and will cost the two countries over 1.5 billion dollars.
In a meeting in Toronto, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and K.Radhakrishnan, Chairman ISRO, signed two documents to launch the NASA-ISRO satellite mission.
“NISAR is the first big collaboration between NASA and ISRO, certainly on radar but just in general as well. This is two frequency radar: it is an L-band 24 centimeter and S-band 13 centimeter. S-band is being built by ISRO and L-band by NASA. It is a major collaboration both in terms of the technical building of the satellite as well as working together across the Pacific between India and U.S.,” said Paul A. Rosen, a scientist working on the NISAR satellite project.
The NISAR satellite will be launched in 2021 from India using ISRO’s Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, reports NDTV.
Last updated: December 26th, 2025
